


Incognito

by phoenixnz



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-06-18 11:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 78,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15484491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixnz/pseuds/phoenixnz
Summary: Lois Lane disappeared three years ago. Now she's back determined to get the people responsible for destroying her life.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BigRed67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigRed67/gifts), [Winchestergirl1967](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchestergirl1967/gifts), [Symphony_of_the_Damned (SymphonyWizard)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SymphonyWizard/gifts).



> This is an adaptation of my own novel, Phoenix. There will be quite a few differences dialogue-wise and in various situations, but the plot will essentially be the same.
> 
> Yes, there are super powers in this 'verse, but all I will say is the Justice League will have a very different purpose.

The Talon had once been a movie theatre but a few years earlier it had been transformed into a coffee shop popular with the local high school crowd. 

Smallville had changed in the ten years the café had been open. While Luthorcorp, now renamed to LexCorp, still remained the town’s biggest employer, most of the younger members of the population had chosen to move away. They’d gone seeking their fortunes in Metropolis, a huge city approximately an hour away by car, or further afield. 

There were those who worked in the city but chose to commute from the town. Lois Lane was one of those people. Her apartment, which she had once shared with her cousin Chloe, was above the coffee shop. It wasn’t ideal, given that the Talon often had late night events like Karaoke, but the rent was cheap. Far cheaper than in the city. 

It was a sweltering hot evening in late June as she left her car and hunted for the keys to the back entrance to the shop. Lois was exhausted. It was the end of a very long day and an even longer week where nothing had gone right. She had come very close to being fired by her boss over some insignificant story she had been reluctant to pursue. 

Feeling inexplicably uneasy, Lois looked around. The street was deserted. Since it was the main street, the buildings consisted of mostly retail. There were a couple of apartments above other stores but as far as she knew they were vacant. Yet she couldn’t help feeling that she was being watched. 

She decided to hustle and dug harder in her purse for the keys, quickly finding the right one and inserting it in the lock. She hurried up the stairs and through the silent store to the stairs to her apartment, unlocking the door and closing it behind her with a sigh of relief. 

She debated whether to have a bath or a shower to get rid of the aches from a long day of sitting down in front of her computer. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been a good few hours since she’d had something to eat. She looked toward the bathroom, longing for a hot shower or a long soak in the tub, but hunger won out. 

The kitchen was small, but big enough for an icebox where Lois kept all her frozen meals. She had never been the best cook and often resorted to the packaged meals, figuring it was better than nothing. She grabbed a package of lasagne and took out the tray, stabbing the cellophane with a knife before sticking it in the microwave. 

She headed to the bedroom, just off the living area, kicking off her shoes and pulling her long, chocolate brown hair out of its knot. As she did so, there was a loud beeping coming from the area of the kitchen. Puzzled, she started to head back to the kitchen to investigate when suddenly the microwave exploded in a shower of shrapnel.

Lois barely had time to shield herself as the entire building shook and became engulfed in a huge fireball. Before she knew what was happening, she was down in the alley, staring in dismay at the destruction. She looked around, that feeling of uneasiness coming back to her, but saw nothing. 

There was nothing for her to do but walk away.

The sun had barely risen when a limousine pulled up a short distance away from the remains of the Talon. A tall man with dark hair got out and stepped onto the pavement. He turned and looked toward the car. A slightly shorter man with a bald head emerged from the limousine. They both stared at the charred ruin.

“What do you think, Clark?” the bald man asked.

Clark Kent shrugged. “Could have been anything, Lex. We won’t know until we get the report from the fire marshal, I guess.”

Lex nodded toward a man in uniform. “Why don’t you go talk to him?”

The fire marshal approached Clark. “Mr Kent.”

“Mr Luthor wondered what your findings were.”

Jay Wise sighed. “Well, we won’t know until we do a thorough investigation but it looks like an electrical fault which ignited the gas line. Anybody in there would have been dead in moments.”

“Was there?”

“We don’t know,” the man said, sighing again. He pulled out a notebook. “The apartment was tenanted, through a rental agency, I believe.”

Clark nodded. “Mr Luthor contracted an agency to manage the rental after his ex-wife left the Talon’s ownership in his hands. Who was the tenant?”

“Her name was Lois Lane. She’s …”

“A reporter at the Metropolis Inquisitor,” Clark finished. “Yeah, Lex has had a few run-ins with her, I believe.”

Wise looked up, hearing his name called. He excused himself and went to talk to the fireman. Clark watched the two men for a moment before turning back to Lex.

“Lane was renting the apartment.”

Lex nodded. “It’s beginning to look more and more like this was not an accident, wouldn’t you agree, Clark?” 

Clark watched as his boss and friend walked away, getting back in the limo. He looked once again at the destruction. Wise returned to him.

“I can tell you that no one was in the building when it blew, but the police found Lois Lane’s car in the alley. It was also damaged in the explosion.”

“But she wasn’t inside?” Clark asked.

“No.”

“All right.” He handed a business card to the man. “Send me everything you have as soon your investigation is complete.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clark turned to join Lex in the limo. He looked around but apart from the usual rubber-neckers, he couldn’t see anyone unusual. 

A few hours later in his office at LexCorp Plaza, he put down the phone. Lois Lane did not turn up for work that day and none of his contacts knew where she was. She had vanished without trace.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two men are being watched

Three years later

She stood on the pavement, watching the two men talking quietly in the Sushi Bar. She wore sunglasses, which was perfectly normal for a bright summer’s day, but these were dark enough that anyone passing by wouldn’t be able to see her eyes. She had learned long ago that the eyes were the window to the soul and she wondered if she took the glasses off whether people would be able to see the burning hatred in them. 

Had she had the benefit of heat vision, she could easily have burned down the restaurant, and its patrons. 

The two men inside looked just like any normal businessmen. One was quite tall with hair as black as ebony. She supposed he could be termed handsome, with his chiselled good looks and piercing blue eyes. He had a build most men would envy. Broad, muscular chest and abs so flat and well-defined she could probably bounce a quarter off them. 

He was dressed casually today, wearing black jeans and a sky-blue shirt that brought out the colour in his eyes. She liked that shirt. She’d been watching the two men for a good part of the last couple of months and knew practically every shirt in the man’s wardrobe. Sure, he had a rather peculiar fetish for plaid on his rare days off from his job, but even that just served to make him endearing.

Careful, she told herself silently. Let’s not go falling for the man. Remember who he works for.

The man’s companion turned around, speaking to the server. He seemed to be putting on the charm as the server smiled at him, looking flattered at whatever he said. She narrowed her eyes as she studied the bald man. He was a few inches shorter than the other man and probably a good few years older. Yet the pair behaved as if they were good friends, laughing and joking with each other. 

The bald man was dressed in a long t-shirt and wool pants which she gathered were fairly expensive. God forbid the man ever be seen in something that cost less than what would have once been her monthly pay cheque. 

The two men started to get up from their chairs, having finished their meals, and headed toward the door. She turned and stepped back, sitting down at a table for a local café. She continued watching, pretending to peruse the café menu as the two men left the restaurant and walked along the street toward her. The bald man was taking a set of keys from his pocket. He pressed a button on a remote and she could hear a chirping sound from a car nearby as the locks and alarm deactivated. 

She snorted to herself. It was typical of the man’s pretentiousness that he would be driving the latest Porsche. The two men continued to talk as they got in.

As the car drove away, she shifted her gaze from the street to the spinning globe on a tall building which appeared to dominate the landscape. She sighed at what once could have been. 

Her rise to the top of the Daily Planet’s editorial team had been almost meteoric. Thanks to her hard work and dedication, she had become the newspaper’s leading investigative journalist in just four short years. It had helped that she had grown up an army brat and wasn’t afraid to take risks to get what she needed. She knew how to mix with the best and the worst society had to offer, from the homeless bums to the highest-ranking general. 

Then along came a guy named Michael Davis. He had been sent to prison for a crime he claimed he didn’t commit. She had been following the story from the moment he’d been arrested, attending his court appearances and talking to his attorney. Davis had contacted her, begging for her help to clear his name. 

When she did talk to him, he’d told her that he was sure he had been framed by someone who worked for Lex Luthor. That Lex himself had ordered it.

A week later, Davis was killed in prison. 

She’d begun digging and found that what Davis had told her was the tip of the iceberg. Lex Luthor had inherited his company from his father, who had died in prison years earlier, supposedly from liver disease. It seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Lex had turned out to be just as evil and manipulative as his father. Maybe even more so. 

Davis had left a breadcrumb. He had left a package with a family friend in case anything happened to him. The package had contained files on people who had been taken from a mental institution on the edge of Metropolis, called Belle Reve. These were people who had claimed to have certain abilities. 

The more she dug, the worse it had looked. Lex had been involved in experimenting on humans, trying to create the ultimate super soldier. 

Eventually she had become so obsessed with chasing the story that her boss had become concerned she was neglecting all her other stories. 

“Listen, Perry, I’m on to something here,” she said. “Trust me.”

“I trust you, Lane. But you need to drop this.”

“There’s no way I’m dropping this. I know I’ve got something on Luthor. I’ve got a hunch, Chief.”

“I can’t go along with this,” the editor replied, pushing back his sandy blond hair. He groaned tiredly, showing all of his fifty-something years. “Not on a hunch. If Luthor figures out what you’re up to …”

“Perry, I didn’t get my Pulitzer for baking brownies.”

She should have listened to her boss, she decided, thinking back to what happened less than two months later. Luthor had found out she was investigating him and had sued the Daily Planet. To save face, the publisher had ordered her fired. 

To top it off, rumours had spread like wildfire that she was an alcoholic and a drug addict, which was completely untrue. She lost everything. Her own family had turned their backs on her. All except her cousin, Chloe. 

Desperate, and almost out of money, Lois had been forced to consider working as a waitress, a job she had taken through college. Until the editor of the Metropolis Inquisitor had offered her an entry-level position as a reporter. She would have to start at the very bottom. The editor was a lech and a snake, but Lois had been desperate enough to take the job. 

She had spent two months at the newspaper. She had hated every minute of those weeks, doing her best to avoid being sexually harassed by an editor who she realised had only hired her for the eye candy. She knew she was the office joke and her rage against the man responsible grew exponentially.

Enough that she promised herself she would take him down. Lex Luthor would pay for what he did to her. As well as anyone allied with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original story, I did devote quite a bit of the chapters to flashbacks, detailing how the characters ended up where they are. I'm doing this a lot differently. 
> 
> I can't promise all the chapters will be as short as this.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex is not happy

“Clark, what the hell do I pay you for?”

Clark Kent looked up with a frown. “What are you talking about, Lex?” he asked.

His boss waved a sheaf of papers at him. “These accounts. The numbers aren’t adding up.”

He took the statements and perused them. Lex had pulled the bank statements from every month for the past three years and highlighted one particular line. One hundred and fifty times. Every week, without fail, there had been a transfer to a company named Phoenix Inc of twenty thousand dollars. 

“Lex, I told you about this weeks ago and I said I would handle it.”

“Three years this has been going on, Clark. Three goddamn years!”

“I’ve had our tech guys onto it and they’ve been trying to trace the payments. Even block them. Whoever is behind it knows exactly what they’re doing.”

The older man still didn’t seem placated. 

“There is something odd going on in my company, Clark. I hired you to fix it.”

“No. Actually, you didn’t hire me in the beginning. I started out in the mail room, remember?”

His friend sighed and shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t like people to think I just gave you an executive-level position because you’re my friend.”

They’d been friends for close to fifteen years, ever since Clark had pulled the bald man out of the river when his car had crashed through the guardrail of Loeb Bridge. Lex had been naturally curious to know how he’d managed to get out unscathed, or with barely a concussion. Clark had done his best to hide the fact that Lex’s car had actually hit him first. Only the fact that he wasn’t actually human had saved him. 

Through the years, their friendship had had its ups and downs. Lex’s almost insatiable curiosity and his need to know the truth about Clark had caused a number of arguments. They’d even stopped being friends for a while, until the death of Clark’s father had mended the rift. Lex had been the one to offer the olive branch. 

Clark had grown up on a farm in Smallville. He’d been adopted by Martha and Jonathan Kent when he was a toddler. It wasn’t until the accident that had almost killed Lex that he had learned the truth about his adoption. His parents had found him shortly after his lifepod had crashed in Miller’s Field.

Through his high school years, the farm had been plagued with financial problems. Clark had watched his father working himself to the bone, trying to keep the farm running almost single-handedly. Although he had often claimed he was healthy as a horse, the stress of always being on the edge of financial ruin had caused Jonathan to have a heart attack in Clark’s third year of high school.

His father had managed to survive that attack, only to go back to work on the farm, against doctor’s orders. He had a massive heart attack and died shortly before Clark’s twenty-first birthday. 

Clark had chosen against advice to drop out of college one year shy of graduation, opting to work on the farm. He’d tried to keep it running by himself, but super speed and super strength could not make up for his lack of knowledge and he soon found that he had bitten off more than he could chew. Most of the land was now leased by other local farmers. It was enough for Martha to buy a small house in Metropolis and provide a small income, but it wasn’t enough to support both of them. Knowing he couldn’t afford to resume his studies, Clark had begun looking around for a job.

Sadly, with his lack of qualifications, the best he could do was get a job washing dishes. He’d approached Lex, asking him for help in finding employment. His friend had made an appointment for him with LexCorp’s HR department and human resources had placed him in the mail room. 

Clark had soon made himself indispensable to his friend, using his skills when he discovered a threat to Lex’s life. He had dealt with the threat before anything had happened.

A week after the incident, his boss in the mail room told him to report to Lex’s office. The man didn’t know that he and Lex were friends and spent much of their spare time together, going to football games, or playing pool in the games room of Lex’s penthouse.

“I need to finish making my rounds,” he said, indicating the mail cart.

“Forget that,” the man replied. “Get up there, or you’re fired!”

Clark obeyed, making his way up to the 55th floor of the building. Lex often complained about the fact that LexCorp Tower, which was once named Luthor Plaza, was not the tallest building in the world, or even in North America. Surely, he would often say, the third richest man in America should have if not the tallest, at least the third tallest building in the country.

He chose to have his own office five floors below the former office of his father, as if he was afraid it was haunted. Clark wondered if that meant Lex somehow felt guilty about his father’s death. The man had died in prison after being convicted for the murders of his parents. 

Clark reported to Lex’s executive assistant. In the days before political correctness went crazy, executive assistants had once been termed secretaries. Lionel Luthor, never one to follow the conventions of the day, had been almost insulting in his continued use of the term. 

The assistant looked at him. “Yes?”

“Clark Kent. L … uh, Mr Luthor wanted to see me.”

She sent him a derisive look, but glanced at her monitor. Clark didn’t know what was on there, but guessed there was a note somewhere about him. 

“Go in, Mr Kent,” she said, her expression showing obvious surprise that her boss would demand to see some lowly peon. 

Clark entered the office. Lex was working on a laptop but smiled and closed the lid.

“Close the door, Mr Kent,” he said, making it sound like a command. It was clearly for the benefit of the assistant.

Once the door was closed, the bald man dropped the cool demeanour and smiled. 

“I heard a little rumour there was somebody threatening to kill me,” he said.

“Uh, Lex …”

His friend waved his hand. “I owe you, Clark. And I thought I should return the favour. I had a talk with my head of security about you. It just so happens they have an opening that would suit you.”

“Lex, you don’t have to …”

“Clark, this is not me making special concessions for you. They really do have an opening. You’re wasted in that mail room with your skills.”

His friend warned him that it was not an easy job. He would be starting at the bottom in the security office, but in a few months, depending on how well he did, he could move up in the ranks. Eventually he could even find himself on Lex’s personal security team. 

It had taken five years, but he had not only become Lex’s chief bodyguard, he was now Lex’s personal assistant. 

Clark sighed as he took the papers from Lex. 

“I’ll go talk to the tech guys again,” he said. 

“Just handle it,” Lex said curtly.

Clark nodded, watching as the billionaire CEO left the office. He glanced at the door, listening, then glanced up at the small black bubble in the ceiling, indicating the security camera. Having worked in the security office, he was very familiar with the systems. He turned to his computer and pressed a few keys, accessing the security system. He had a program specially installed on his computer which would allow him to play video surveillance in a loop.

As soon as he was sure the loop was playing, he opened the drawer and reached under for a small transmitting device. He placed the device on his ear.

“We need to talk,” he said. 

“Five minutes,” was the response. 

Clark returned the security system to normal and stood up, picking up the papers. He left the office, ensuring no one was about before using super speed. He made his way up the stairs to the roof, taking off and flying to a building with a glass-domed roof.

A tall man with dark hair stood studying various monitors. He didn’t look around as Clark entered through the main doors.

“What’s going on?”

Clark handed him the papers. “Phoenix Inc.”

“What about it?”

“Bruce, please tell me you’ve managed to track the company.”

“I can’t. But that’s because Phoenix Inc doesn’t exist. There is no office listed anywhere in the world. It looks to me like it’s a dummy corporation.”

“Lex knows. He knows that this company, whoever it is, has embezzled three million dollars from his accounts in the last three years.”

“You told him you’d handle it, right?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell him. I can’t just go and tell him it doesn’t exist.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Clark. I tracked the funds to an account in the Caymans and from there it vanished. Whoever is behind it knows what they’re doing.”

“So, are they targeting Lex?”

“Sure looks like it.”

Clark sighed. “Now what?”

“You keep doing your job and I’ll do mine. This is what we’ve been working for all this time, Clark.”

“I didn’t think it would take this long.”

“I’ve heard of agents being undercover for a lot longer. You know Lex covers his tracks. We need proof before we can get an indictment. That’s what we need you for. You were the only one close enough that Lex would actually trust you.”

They’d approached him a year before his father died. They’d needed someone on the inside of Lex’s company. Someone who could feed them information on Lex’s illegal activities. He had refused then, wanting to protect his parents. When his father died, they’d approached him again.

“The Justice League needs you,” Bruce Wayne had told him. 

“The Justice League?”

“It’s what we’re calling it,” his friend Oliver Queen had added. 

The Justice League. An agency of people with a range of abilities, investigating people like Lex who abused their power. Lex was the biggest, hence they needed someone with the ability to go up against him. As much as Oliver Queen was rich and powerful enough to fight him, Bruce had suggested Clark would be in the ideal position to be their inside man.

“I have to get back,” Clark said. “I’m going with Lex to the opening of the Atlantis tonight.”

“Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Bruce replied. “And don’t worry about Phoenix Inc, all right? Just tell Lex you’re investigating, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Clark rolled his eyes at the cliché. “Yeah, thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this gives you an idea of what Clark is doing working for Lex. As I said earlier, the Justice League has a very different purpose in this 'verse.


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois attends the club opening

The grand re-opening of the Atlantis nightclub was by invitation only but she had managed to get herself invited as she had helped the new owner with publicity. She had seen the invitation list and knew Lex and his bodyguard/executive assistant was going to be there as well.

She dressed carefully in what had once been loosely termed a ‘little black dress’. It came to just above her knees. Not short enough to be indecent and not too long that anyone there couldn’t get a glimpse of long, shapely legs. She was hardly skinny, but she prided herself on her athletic body.

She applied make-up skilfully, using eyeliner, mascara and eyeshadow to make her eyes pop, then used a matte powder to contour her face. The idea was to make it appear a little thinner than it had been three years ago, but not so thin that the effect would look almost macabre. She had watched dozens of tutorials on YouTube on how to use make-up to her advantage. 

Once her make-up was done, she experimented with different hairstyles. When she had been working at the Planet, she had had dark honey-coloured hair with blonde highlights. She’d worn it mostly with the length down her back, the sides pinned up for neatness. After everything had blown apart and she’d found it necessary to disappear off the radar for a while, she had cut her hair very short, going for a white blonde look. It hadn’t exactly suited her skin tone, but it had created a very sharp contrast to her looks. Even her own father would have had trouble picking her out of a crowd. 

When she’d returned to the city, she had dyed her hair red and had extensions put in by a professional hairdresser. Her actual hair was just a little below her shoulders and had started to follow the natural curl. The extensions gave her another three or four inches so it was down to the middle of her back. 

She held up the length, wondering if she should put it up in some kind of knot or leave it down. She decided to go with something that was a combination of both. 

The opening party was already in full swing when she arrived. The owner greeted her with a smile and a kiss on each cheek. He was a fairly average-looking man except for his blonde hair and intense blue eyes. He claimed to have some Scandinavian ancestry which accounted for the fairness, she supposed. He was tall – well over six foot and often tried to use that height to impress or intimidate people. She wasn’t someone who was easily impressed by such things. 

She didn’t really like Morgan Edge, Junior. The man was a poser and had a reputation with women that was hardly flattering. He appeared to think he was God’s gift, but she had at least managed to deter his wandering hands by telling him if he was her gift, she’d return it toot suite. He’d laughed it off as a joke but she had been deadly serious. Had he tried to take things further, she would have used all the martial arts she’d learned as a child to beat the message into him. 

Rumour had it that his father, Morgan Edge, Senior, had owned the club years ago. It had been implied in the newspapers that senior had been involved in organised crime in the city and that the club was a front for such activity. There was also some connection to the late Lionel Luthor. She recalled that many years ago, Lionel had been convicted for the murders of his parents and Edge had helped him commit the deed. 

Junior was more than likely just as involved, but she was fairly sure the kingpin nowadays was someone much higher up the food chain. 

Morgan handed her a glass of champagne and waved his hand.

“Have fun,” he said. “Mingle.”

She glanced at the crowd. There had to be at least two hundred people in the club. Given that the club had a fairly large dancefloor, she expected it would fit close to five hundred, but considering this was a by-invitation-only event she decided the number was just about bang-on.

She didn’t see her quarry in the crowd, but that didn’t mean anything. Given the throng of people, he could be anywhere. Or more than likely he hadn’t arrived yet. 

She decided to join the dancers. The music was a little too loud and she found the discordant sound of the bass distracting. She didn’t consider herself an expert on music, although she had once sung in a school choir. Unfortunately for her, she never had the chance to join another one as her father had been transferred to another army base a month before the end of the school year and the new school didn’t have a music teacher, let alone a choir.

She had always been a fan of rock rather than pop music. Groups like Whitesnake and Def Leppard were a huge part of her childhood. She had once gone to a Whitesnake concert and bought a t-shirt. She had worn it for two weeks before her father had insisted she take it off to be laundered. The base laundry had practically ruined the shirt and she’d turned it into a cushion instead. 

An old boyfriend had claimed she had no taste when it came to music. At least, she thought, I had enough taste to know when I hear good music. This was not, she thought, as the song came to an end with what sounded like a dozen electric guitars screeching to the finish. 

A man a few years younger than her asked her to dance to the next song. He had red hair and, as was normal for most redheads, a mass of freckles on his face. This song, while it still had a little too much bass, at least seemed to have a decent rhythm to it. She let her body absorb the music and began to slowly move to the beat. 

Her dance partner was no more skilled at dancing than he was in the art of conversation. He flailed his arms, his feet moving to a rhythm that appeared to be all his own invention, reminding her of a fish flopping on the sand, gasping for air. Or an octopus. She was not the best of dancers herself, having only taken a year of dancing lessons before her mother died. Once the matriarch of her family was gone, there was no one to temper her father and remind him that his daughters were children and not new recruits forced to obey commands they didn’t understand. 

She managed to escape the clutches of the young man she had quickly nicknamed Mr Squiddly to get another glass of champagne. As she sipped the wine, a tall man came to stand next to her. She turned around to watch the dancers on the floor, pretending not to notice the man. 

“I was starting to think you needed rescuing,” he said.

She turned to look at him and found herself gazing into piercing blue eyes. The same eyes she’d seen in dozens of photographs she’d taken personally. At a distance, anyway.

“Oh, I think I do pretty well by myself,” she replied. 

He nodded, his gaze sweeping over her body. She could tell from his expression that he liked what he saw. 

“Yeah, you look like someone who can take good care of herself.”

She snorted in derision. “Is that supposed to be a line?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

He smirked at her as if he was so sure of himself that he figured she would just instantly fall into his arms. She had to admit he was rather good-looking with black, wavy hair and chiselled features. 

“Well, I’m going to dance.”

The man caught her hand and held her back for just a second. 

“Dance with me,” he said. “I can’t promise I’ll be as good as that guy, but …”

She snorted again. “Oh, please. Anything else would be a vast improvement.”

He smiled crookedly, showing pointed fangs. It was a slight imperfection in an otherwise perfect face. 

“I hope your feet have insurance,” he joked, taking her hand and leading her back out to the dance floor.

The song was, fortunately, a slow one. He held her close, but not too close, with a hand at her waist and the other clasping her right hand a little out to the side. 

“By the way. My name’s Clark.”

“Joanne,” she replied. She’d decided to use her middle name instead of her real name. It was easier. She was less likely to slip up. 

“Doesn’t suit you,” he said with a smile. 

“Oh? What would?”

“You know, I have no idea. I just look at you and you don’t look like a Joanne to me.”

“What does a Joanne look like?” she asked, amused in spite of herself. 

“Well, certainly not someone who is the loveliest woman in the room tonight.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she returned. “Anyway, did you know that in Hebrew, it means ‘God is gracious’?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t know that. I still stand by what I said. I’m not saying you’re not gracious, or graceful, or whatever the hell that means, but it still doesn’t suit you.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark is not having a good time

Clark had never considered himself the partying type. The only reason he was at the opening, or re-opening of the Atlantis was that Lex had asked him to go. Not as his executive assistant, not even as his employee, but as his friend. Given that there was going to be plenty of security at the event, the other man didn’t so much as need a bodyguard as someone to fend off the next prospective Mrs Luthor. 

Lex had been married three times. The first time, he had left Smallville, where he was managing Luthorcorp Plant No. 3, otherwise known as the Smallville Fertiliser Plant, to stay in Metropolis for a month. He’d been forced to leave the mansion for a short period as it had been damaged in a tornado early that summer. Clark had been at a school dance with his then-girlfriend when the twister had struck. 

While he was staying in the city, he’d attended a social event and run into a woman named Desiree Atkins. She’d claimed she was there to ‘rescue’ Lex from the dreariness of his life as his father’s pawn. It turned out that she had been infected by the meteors which had struck when Lex was nine. The same meteors that had covered the arrival of the lifepod containing Clark as a toddler. 

Lex’s second marriage had been to a woman named Helen Bryce. She was a doctor at Smallville Medical Center. He had fallen hard for the pretty doctor, unaware at the time that she had been employed by Lionel to spy on him. Helen had eventually decided that the money Lionel was paying her wasn’t enough and she wanted it all. She had tried to kill Lex as they were flying away to their honeymoon by drugging him and paying the pilot to abandon ship before the plane plunged into the Pacific. Lex had often said he had some kind of guardian angel watching over him as he had managed to survive the ensuing crash and was stranded on an island for three months. 

His third marriage was to a girl Clark had gone to high school with. Clark had had a crush on Lana Lang right from first grade, but the young brunette had never seemed to notice. Pretty and popular, most thought she was a bit vapid, continuing to cash in on the fame of being on the cover of Time Magazine when it published an article on the deadly meteor shower. Her other claim to fame was the fact that she had lost both her parents when a meteor had crashed to Earth, crushing their car and Lewis and Laura Lang along with it. 

To her credit, Lana had changed people’s perceptions of her their freshman year at Smallville High. She had quit cheerleading and presented a proposal to Lex to revamp the old movie theatre, the Talon, into a coffee shop. A space above had also been extensively refurbished as an apartment which could be rented out.

Lex was quite taken with the young woman, although it was a good few years before they’d actually started dating. The marriage had lasted barely long enough for her to give birth to their son, Alexander Junior. Alex was in his father’s custody, although Lex spent little time with him. 

Clark had no idea where Lana was. 

When Lex had told him he had to accompany him to the re-opening, Clark had tried to beg off. He knew the Atlantis, having spent a good chunk of the summer he was sixteen as a runaway in Metropolis. Lex knew about that summer. Not all the gory details, but enough. Just as he knew Clark had certain abilities. 

He’d told Lex just enough of the truth to make it sound plausible. His friend didn’t know everything but what he did know had been sufficient to make him stop asking questions. He knew nothing of Krypton, or of Clark’s alien heritage. He’d told Lex that he’d been caught in the meteor shower and had been wandering in Miller’s Field after it had happened with no memory of who he was or how he had got there. Bruce had even managed to provide fake documents which proved that his birth parents had died in the catastrophe. 

Lex had once asked him if he was interested in discovering how he managed to get his abilities, but Clark had declined, saying it was too much a reminder that he wasn’t ‘normal’. He played up the years of loneliness and the fear of being taken away from his parents should someone discover just how different he was. 

It was something the bald man knew very well. Having been subjected to years of cruelty by Lionel, Lex had admitted to feeling much the same thing. 

“I guess that’s why we’re such good friends, then,” Clark had once told him. 

Clark sighed, looking around the club. He sipped his glass of champagne.

“You could at least try to enjoy yourself,” Lex admonished him.

“I thought you brought me here to be your bodyguard,” Clark returned.

The bald man shook his head and smirked. “Junior’s taken care of that.” He sighed. “Look, I get it. But it’s been, what, five years? I heard she’s dating Queen, now.”

Clark nodded. The last time he’d seen his ex-girlfriend, it had been at a charity function. He’d been there in an official capacity. She had glared daggers at him once she’d seen he was accompanying his boss, then turned to her date. A man as tall as Clark with blond spiked hair. 

Oliver Queen. He had been a classmate of Lex’s at Excelsior Academy. The way Lex had described it, the other man had been a bully and an ass. The two men’s enmity hadn’t changed in the intervening years. In fact, it had worsened now that their respective companies were business rivals. 

Yet, while Lex wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and use every piece of information he could lay his hands on to get his way, Queen’s reputation was as an honest businessman.  
Clark had met Oliver some years earlier. The older man had been investigating clients of a subsidiary company of LexCorp who had suddenly acquired items which were known treasures, stolen from museums and art galleries all over the world. Clark had misinterpreted Oliver’s motives and demanded answers. 

Oliver had been the one to approach him for the operation. 

“Clark, she’s moved on. You should too.”

“I date,” Clark told Lex in a half-hearted protest. 

“You have dinner with them. How many have you actually gone to bed with?”

Clark hadn’t gone to bed with anyone since his ex. He just didn’t need the complication. Unlike Lex, who didn’t see anything wrong with one-night stands. Even after one of those one-night stands had turned murderous.

“Well, we can’t all be you, Lex.”

“Ouch!” The other man was quiet for a few moments. He turned once again to study the crowd. “Oh god! Look at that guy. Is he dancing or trying to catch fish.”

Clark followed his friend’s gaze. The man he indicated was all over the place. The woman he was dancing with looked embarrassed. 

He studied the woman. She was pretty with dark red tresses. She was wearing a black dress which hugged her curves, enhancing her stunning figure. 

“Ah, I see some interest. Why don’t you go talk to her? It’ll give her a chance to get away from Doc Ock there.”

“You and your comics,” Clark returned, amused. Lex just smirked at him and pushed him in the woman’s direction.

She had moved to the bar and was now drinking a glass of champagne. 

“I was starting to think you needed rescuing,” he said as he moved to lean on the bar beside her.

She turned to look at him. Even with the make-up, she had the most amazing hazel eyes. She smiled.

“Oh, I think I do pretty well by myself.”

He swept his gaze over her and smiled back. Maybe he didn’t believe in instant attraction, but she was definitely someone he wanted to get to know better.

He had no idea what he said to her next, but she appeared to like whatever it was, agreeing to dance with him. Thankfully, the next song was a slow one. He chose to act the gentleman and dance with her in a more formal fashion, rather than holding her too close. 

He decided now would be a good time to introduce himself. When she told him her name he wondered why the name just didn’t sound right. 

As he continued to talk with her, he had the strangest sensation that he knew her from somewhere. Maybe it was the way she spoke. The tone, or the language. Or maybe it was the way she carried herself. He just felt … something.


	6. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They talk

She hadn’t expected him to be such good company. Once she’d had enough of dancing, Clark had supplied her with more champagne and sat her down on one of the couches, a little way off the dance floor.

They’d tried talking while they were dancing, but the loud music and the crowd made it difficult. He’d been saying something to her that she couldn’t catch.

She gestured toward her ear and traced a circle around it.

“I can’t hear you,” she said.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her closer.

“I was just saying, I could use another drink.”

She followed him to the other side of the club, where it was quieter. A woman in a black shirt and short skirt approached him. Clark spoke inaudibly to her and she nodded, turning away.

“How do you …” she began.

“The trick is to talk under the din, not over it,” Clark said.

“Oh.” She’d spent some of her teen years in various nightclubs and she’d forgotten that trick.

“You never learned that trick?” he asked.

“I did, actually,” she told him, a little defensively. “It’s just been a few years.”

“A few? You were trawling nightclubs as a kid?” he asked, cocking his eyebrow.

“Cute,” she returned. “I’m older than I look. But yes, I did spend a few summers around nightclubs.”

“Let me guess. Rebelling against your dad?”

She grinned. “Something like that. My dad could be kind of over-protective.”

“I’m not surprised,” Clark returned with an appreciative look. “With your looks, it would be like bees to honey.”

She was flattered. How could she not be? She’d had such compliments before, but with Clark it seemed sincere.

Careful, she told herself. Remember who he is.

They talked for a while, mostly about trivial matters. She deliberately sipped her champagne, making sure it would last. In the old days, she would have been able to drink even her father’s colleagues under the table, but nowadays she was more cautious. She noticed Clark wasn’t pacing himself and wondered if she could use that to her advantage.

“So, how do you know Morgan?” he asked.

“Oh, just through a friend of a friend,” she told him. “I helped him publicise the re-opening.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. She had known quite a few people in the so-called ‘underworld’. Part of being a good journalist was having contacts from, to use a cliché, all walks of life. Some of those she’d known were considered errand boys for the local criminal element. She had quickly learned that as long as she didn’t spill the beans on who her sources were, they would give her as much information as she could handle.

_When she’d returned to Metropolis more than two months earlier, she had tracked one of her old sources down. Bobby Bigmouth hadn’t recognised her until she’d held up a bag containing all his favourite foods. Something only someone reasonably close to him would know._

_Bobby was one of those people who somehow managed to get information on everything going on, especially with one of the local gangs. She had never questioned this mysterious ability, especially when he had been proven right on so many occasions._

_She had known he worked in a local deli. Given his love of food, it was no surprise. Bobby Bigmouth, so named because he tended to be always chewing on something, was a tall man in his forties. He was skinny as a rail, something he put down to a freak metabolism._

_He wasn’t working at the deli the day she dropped in, so she left a note, telling him to meet her at a particular location and she would be waiting with his favourite food. Bobby was not big on ‘health food’. She’d once heard a rumour that a rival reporter had brought him a salad shake and he’d refused to speak to her._

_She waited at the location in the SUV she’d bought. She didn’t like the big cars. While she wasn’t exactly short, she still found them too roomy. She’d always liked sporty-type vehicles. Yet knowing she needed to avoid discovery, she had gone for something the complete opposite of her taste._

_He was right on time. He’d always been a fairly punctual kind of source. Something else that had been in his favour. She’d often told her sources she had deadlines and didn’t like to be kept waiting._

_He looked at her as he got in the passenger side of the SUV. He peered at her curiously and she held her breath for a moment, wondering if he recognised her._

_“How about you tell me your name so I know I’m not wastin’ my time,” he said. She shook her head and he sighed. “So? What’d ya bring me?”_

_She held up a brown paper bag and handed it to him. He opened up the top and looked at the contents._

_“Pastrami on Rye? And Chocolate Tortes?”_

_He again looked at her, studying her curiously. She took off the glasses she’d been wearing and turned her head. He was dumbstruck for a moment, his eyes widening._

_“Jeez … I heard you had vanished off the face of the Earth!”_

_“Not quite,” she said coolly. “Tell me what you know.”_

_“What do you need?” he asked, taking out his sandwich and biting into it, making appreciative noises as he did so._

_“Luthor. I need_ in _,” she told him. “Can you help me or not?”_

_Eventually, he told her he could put her in touch with the son of the former boss of Intergang. Morgan Edge Jnr was supposedly going legit and re-opening his father’s old club. Bobby had also mentioned that Lex Luthor was the club’s main investor._

_She had wondered if that meant Lex was taking over Intergang but was yet to find any proof._

_She knew if she was going to get what she needed, she had to get on the inside. The one thing she had learned long ago was that networking was everything. The only way in was through someone else._

_Lex Luthor was out. It wasn’t just that she hated the man. She loathed him. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold back her revulsion._

_Clark, on the other hand, was something of a dark horse. She knew he grew up on a farm, but very little else. She had learned that the farm had been on the brink of bankruptcy when Clark began working for LexCorp, as it had been renamed after Lionel Luthor passed away. He’d somehow managed to rise through the ranks, so to speak, to become Lex’s trusted assistant/bodyguard._

_It was not the most brilliant of plans, she acknowledged. In the past, she would have donned some kind of disguise and tried to bluff her way into the Metropolis corporate offices. Considering the way Luthor had destroyed her career, she knew a disguise wouldn’t work this time._

_Luthor was well-known for quoting from such philosophical texts as Machiavelli’s The Prince, or Sun Tzu’s Art of War, so she had figured the way to fight fire with fire was to learn everything she could about the man’s thought processes. If such texts were his major influences growing up, then it was natural to assume he had learned the art of manipulation from them._

_She hoped her strategy would also work on Clark._

She continued to sip from her glass of champagne. She was onto her second since they’d sat down while he was onto his fourth.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said.

“Nothing to tell, really,” she replied. “I spent a couple of years in Europe and decided it was time I came home.”

“What were you doing in Europe?”

“Oh, I worked for a fashion magazine. I figured it was a great way to see the publicity machine in action.”

“So, that helped you get the job here?” he asked. She’d already told him she had handled publicity for the opening.

She waved her hand casually. “Oh, no, I just did this as a favour.”

Lex approached their table. “Clark, I’m heading out.”

Clark started to rise, but the bald man stopped him. “No, stay and enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Oh, uh, Lex, this is Joanne. She helped Morgan with the opening.”

He looked her up and down, practically leering at her. She fought back a shudder of disgust. “Joanne? Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said. She turned back to Clark as the other man walked off. “So, your turn.”

Clark grinned. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

“Everything.”

“Well, that narrows it down,” he replied with a hint of sarcasm. She rolled her eyes and laughed.

“Not afraid, are you?” she said with a sly grin. “Not hiding any skeletons in closets or anything?”

He responded with a laugh of his own. “I can see you’re going to be a handful.”


	7. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conversation turns to Clark's past.

Clark studied Joanne. He’d noticed she was pacing herself with the champagne, although she appeared to be taking note of the fact that he had already drunk more than her. It didn’t matter, since he couldn’t actually get drunk.

He hadn’t really known for sure whether alcohol could affect him until Lex had suggested a drinking game. Always the cautious one, Clark had refused to touch a drop of alcohol before he was of legal age, although he didn’t really know when his real birthday was. That was the trouble with being sent rocketing through space in his infancy. Not even his birth father could give him any indication of when the Earth equivalent date of his birthday was. So he continued to use the date chosen by his parents for his birth certificate when they’d adopted him.

_He’d been feeling depressed on his twenty-first birthday. It had only been a few weeks since Jonathan’s death and he was still trying to come to terms with it._

_“You know what you need,” Lex said. Clark had been invited over to the mansion for a quiet dinner with his friend. His mother had not been feeling well, another casualty of the fallout since his father’s death, and he’d told her not to worry about celebrating his birthday._

_He looked at Lex. The other man was twenty-seven, although he would be twenty-eight in September. Clark remembered that Lex had only just turned twenty-one when they’d met seven years earlier._

_He did not consider his friend to be conventionally good-looking. Lex had been bald since the age of nine, the result of exposure to the meteors. Clark had heard a lot of women in Smallville talk about the Luthor scion as if he was the best thing since sliced bread. ‘Sexy’ was the word he’d heard bandied about. He’d once asked his girlfriend what women saw in Lex, but she’d only shrugged and suggested perhaps they were attracted to his money. Even in Smallville, ‘Middletown USA’, a small minority were just as shallow as the rest of America._

_It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lex. As a fourteen-year-old, he’d been overwhelmed by the man’s apparent maturity. As he’d got to know the other man, he’d begun to realise that the bald man was just as insecure; maybe even more so. Despite the pressures placed on him by his father, being forced to run a business he knew nothing about, around others, he was arrogant, walking around with a swagger that tended to make him more enemies than friends. Clark, however, saw another side of Lex. A side where he liked to act like the kid he never got to be, even when he was one._

_It was that side of him that had convinced Clark the other man had needed a friend._

_“What do I need, Lex?” he asked._

_“You need a pick-me-up. Maybe we should go into the city, check out some of the clubs.”_

_Clark shook his head. “No, I don’t feel like partying.”_

_“Why not? You’re legal now.”_

_“I’m not in the mood.”_

_“Okay,” Lex shrugged. “Your loss.” He sat back in his chair, drinking from the blue bottle of mineral water. He had the water specially imported from Europe. Clark had once asked him why, when he could have got local._

_“Because I can,” his friend had replied with a smirk._

_Clark studied his friend as the other man sipped from the bottle, looking contemplative._

_“Okay, I have an idea. I’ll put on a movie. You choose. We’ll grab ourselves a few drinks and play a drinking game.”_

_He had tried to get out of it, but Lex was determined to cheer him up. So they’d watched a movie Clark had chosen and Lex had come up with the rule that every time a character used a cliché, they had to drink a shot._

_By the time the movie was over, Lex was plastered, but Clark was completely sober._

He finished his glass of champagne and leaned forward.

“So, you want to know everything, huh?”

“Yes, I do. Like how does someone like you get to be Lex Luthor’s personal bodyguard?”

“You know, sometimes I even ask myself that question.”

He told her about growing up in Smallville, his friendship with Lex and how the loss of his father had led to working for the young billionaire. She appeared intrigued by his life on the farm and sympathetic to what had happened to Jonathan.

“I’m sorry. I lost my mom when I was very young, so I know how it feels.”

She couldn’t possibly, he thought. Their experiences were obviously very different. Losing Jonathan had been gut-wrenching. He’d gone over it again and again in his mind, wondering if there was something he could have done to have prevented it. He’d even considered going to his birth father and asking him to bring Jonathan back, but his mother, Martha, had told him it wouldn’t help. Even his girlfriend had told him it wouldn’t change anything.

_“Even with all my abilities, all those things I can do, I couldn’t save him,” he’d told his girlfriend that night._

_“You can’t change the past, Clark. I know that better than anyone.”_

Joanne continued to ask him questions, making him feel as if he was at an interview. She asked questions that, to him, appeared to have been carefully thought out and worded in such a way that they would get him to talk about himself. Every time he would try to steer the conversation back to her, she would skilfully evade his questioning and turn it back around to him.

It reminded him a lot of his ex. She had always had an innate curiosity which did tend to land her in trouble more often than not. She’d always had ambitions of becoming a reporter for the biggest newspaper in the country, but had never quite made it.

The conversation inevitably got around to his ex.

“So what happened between you and your ex?” Joanne asked.

“How do you know she’s my ex?” he replied.

“Because you’re here with me instead of being with her.”

He nodded. Okay, so she’d caught him on that one.

_They’d met in eighth grade. He’d been asked to show a new student around the junior high. Chloe and her father had moved to Smallville as he’d just taken a job at the Luthorcorp plant as a manager._

_In high school, Chloe had fought for the position of Editor of the Smallville Torch. Despite the principal’s misgivings, she had won him over not only with her promises to turn the Smallville High newspaper into a decent publication, but also with her passion. She had been volunteering for school newspapers since third grade and had even done some freelancing with a city paper. Not quite the Daily Planet but still enough for the principal to notice._

_It was thanks to a young boy who appeared to have telepathic abilities that Clark realised Chloe had had a crush on him. When she had been kidnapped, he’d begun to realise that perhaps her crush was not totally one-sided. He’d asked her to the Spring Formal and she’d accepted._

_She’d been upset when he’d disappeared to help Lana Lang when the brunette was caught up in a tornado. A couple of days later, as they were searching the area for his father, who had also been caught up in the storm, Chloe had pulled him aside._

_“You know, I've been thinking. It's funny how a natural disaster puts your life in perspective, but I think that it might be better if we just stayed really good friends. Anything other than that just gets too complicated.”_

_He’d been going to just agree with her but something had stopped him. Maybe it was the way she avoided his gaze, or the slight hitch in her voice. He knew if he made the wrong decision, he could possibly lose her forever._

_“No,” he said. “I’m not going to let you walk away and pretend like the dance never happened. I know it looked bad, me disappearing like that, and I can’t tell you exactly what happened. I can only ask you to give this another chance.”_

_She’d appeared almost taken aback, but he’d been relieved when she had agreed to it. She’d left Smallville a week later to work at her summer internship at the Daily Planet. He’d gone to the city every weekend that summer to take her out._

_They’d talked about getting engaged not long after they’d graduated high school, but it had never really seemed to work out. Chloe had gone off to college at Met U while Clark had enrolled at Kansas A &M. With his father’s declining health, he’d dropped out. Something Chloe hadn’t agreed with._

_The final straw in their relationship had been his taking a job with LexCorp._

_“I can’t believe you!” she’d spat angrily. They'd been arguing in the middle of the Talon. “How can you go and work for that … that …”_

_“It’s not like there’s a whole lot of choice. Chloe, I’m sorry you don’t like this, but this was my decision.”_

_She’d continued to live in Smallville, but once he’d started moving up the ranks in LexCorp, she had refused to see him._

He looked at Joanne. “I guess we just realised that we have different interests.”

She nodded. “People drift apart. It happens.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Clark and Chloe took the road-not-taken. As for how Chloe lived in the apartment with Lois, yet Clark and Lois have never met, that will be explained eventually.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois thinks about the past

She had slept late. That was a given, considering she had been at Atlantis until about three in the morning. The club would be open until five on normal nights, but since this had been the grand re-opening bash, Junior had decided to end the party at around one. He’d come over to the table where she’d been talking with Clark and told them he was closing up but they were welcome to stay and have coffee.

She had been more than a little surprised at Clark’s manner. Despite her feelings about the man he worked for, she had found him easygoing and almost gentle. She had liked talking to him.

They’d spent a couple of hours over coffees talking about a variety of subjects from movies to music. She’d teased Clark when she found out he liked romantic comedies.

“You don’t like them?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never been a chick flick kind of girl. Give me a good action movie any day.”

“They’re not all bad,” he replied with a sheepish look. “My mom loved anything with Meg Ryan. You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally.”

“Ugh. Cliched.”

“So, let me guess. You prefer Stallone, Schwarzenegger …”

“They’re all right, I guess. I wasn’t a fan of Terminator. Too many plot-holes, for one.”

Clark shrugged. “I guess that’s true. So what kind of music do you like? I noticed you’re not exactly a fan of the stuff they play here.”

“Too much bass,” she said. She’d spent a lot of time in clubs when she’d been rebelling against her father and had often marvelled at the fact that her hearing had remained relatively intact. “I hate to say it, because I’d sound too much like my dad, but most of it is just noise. There isn’t actually any rhythm.”

“I kind of have to agree with you on that. I have to admit, when I saw you dancing with that guy, I did wonder why you didn’t just walk away.”

She’d done her best to hide her embarrassment at the guy’s bad dancing. She had figured that it would attract attention to them. She had just hoped that it was the right kind of attention.

“You mean, Mr Squiddly?” she asked with a laugh. Clark cocked an eyebrow at her, then chuckled.

“Lex called him Doc Ock. You know, from the Spiderman comics?” he added as she frowned at him. “He has these mechanical tentacles.”

“I don’t read comics. I’m guessing he’s a fan.”

“He grew up reading Warrior Angel comics.”

“I don’t know that one,” she lied. She had been forced to cover a comic convention once and had come across a story about a stolen rare Warrior Angel comic.

She’d never been a fan of the medium. Her father had often complained about the waste of money. Even as a highly-decorated officer in the army, his monthly salary hadn’t been that great. There was also the fact that they’d moved every eighteen months or so and packing was always a chore.

Clark had offered her a ride home after they’d left the club, but she had declined. As much as she had liked talking to him, she wanted to take it slow. The one thing she had learned about getting what she wanted out of people, it was to take things slowly until she had time to gauge their reactions. Clark appeared to be a cautious kind of man. Whether that had something to do with having been raised on a farm in a small community, she had no idea.

When she had returned to Metropolis, she had found herself an apartment a couple of blocks from LexCorp Plaza. The Plaza was across the street from the Daily Planet. If she was looking out her east-side window, she could just see the spinning globe on top of the building. It hurt, being so close to the scene of the crime, so-to-speak. She also ran the risk of running into one of her old colleagues, who might recognise her. She hoped not. Most people tended not to see what was right in front of their faces and she thought she had made enough changes in her hair and make-up that they wouldn’t know it was her without looking closer.

She rolled over and glanced at the clock on her phone. The sun was pouring in, filtered only slightly by the net curtains across the window. She hadn’t pulled the drapes when she’d gone to bed and the sun was shining brightly, leaving long shadows across the cream cover on her bed.

Yawning, she reached for her phone and swiped the screen with a finger. There was a message. One of her contacts needed to talk to her.

She sent him a reply, telling him she would meet him at a café downtown, giving herself an hour to get up and get ready.

She stretched lazily, thinking once again about her evening. She hadn’t gone with high expectations. From what she’d learned studying the man, Clark Kent was not easily swayed by a pretty face. He’d gone out on a few dates but every date had ended with a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t go out with the same girl twice unless she seemed to pique his interest.

She had managed to get over the first hurdle. He was definitely interested. The question was, would she be able to hold that interest?

She was under no illusions about herself. _She’d grown up thinking she wasn’t what her father had expected. When her mother died, he had treated her almost as if she was one of his soldiers instead of a daughter. She had often wondered as she grew older if he really had wanted a boy instead of a girl._

_As she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and take a shower, she stared at her reflection in the mirror. As a young girl, she’d preferred short hair and boyish looks, thinking that that would make her father see her. Once she’d begun to realise that it didn’t matter what she did or how she dressed, she had grown her hair long. She’d started smoking, mostly because he’d been dead set against it, but had quickly begun to hate the smell of smoke on her clothes. Fortunately, she hadn’t damaged her skin, which was still soft and smooth._

_Her father had never praised her. Not even when she made good grades in school. Yet her sister, Lucy, had been sent to a boarding school where she had achieved straight-As in almost every subject. Of course, there had always been that one subject her father had criticised._

_She’d been ten when she’d developed a crush on a boy in her class. She had overheard what he’d said when he’d found out._

_“Her?” he’d said with a snort. “She’s ugly. Why would I be interested in her?”_

_In tears, she had gone to her father’s office on base. She’d sat in the outer office, a tissue in one hand. The corporal who sat at the desk had taken pity on her and gave her a small bag of M &Ms while she waited for her father._

_She’d sat there for an hour. It was only when the corporal began packing up to go off duty for the day that her father came out. He didn’t say a word in greeting and strode out the office door. She ran to catch up with him and followed him as he went to carry out an inspection._

_“Am I pretty, Daddy?” she asked when she could finally catch her breath._

_He never even responded, except with a grunt. He’d never asked her what she was doing there and it had felt like she didn’t even exist._

_Her high school years had been just as difficult. She’d skipped most of her classes and didn’t graduate with the rest of her class. Her father had almost sent her to Smallville High but at the last minute had decided to send her to Metropolis High instead. She had boarded in the city with a friend of her father’s, a retired colonel who had been even stricter than the General._

_She had been forced to knuckle down and focus on her studies. Lois had even been banned from attending any school social events so she could concentrate on getting her credits. Feeling even more alone than ever, unable to even talk to her cousin in Smallville, she decided to do her utmost to earn as many credits as she could in the first semester so she could get mid-year admission to college._

_The work paid off and she was able to re-enrol. Her initial acceptance to Met U having been revoked due to her lack of credits, she had to go to Kansas State instead. She took a part-time job in a coffee shop and spent all her time studying. When she finished her freshman year with almost straight-As, she went to her father._

_It was as if someone had switched on a lightbulb and he had seen her in a new light. She had been surprised to see that he was not only impressed with what she had managed to achieve but was also proud._

_It had marked a change in their relationship. Suddenly the general saw his daughter as an adult who could be trusted to make hard decisions. They’d finally sat down and had a long talk. It was the first time she had also begun to understand exactly why her father had behaved the way he did. He just hadn’t been able to handle losing the love of his life. Dealing with two grieving daughters as well had been something he couldn’t cope with._

_Despite that, she had shied away from relationships. She’d focused on her career instead of dating, making her colleagues think she was either a snob or just not that interesting._

_She had gone out on dates, but usually, it had been one date and that was it. As if she was somehow the ‘kiss of death’ when it came to relationships._

Yet she couldn’t help thinking about Clark as she put on her make-up. He clearly hadn’t dated a lot either since breaking up with his ex-girlfriend.

She wondered what his reaction would be if she told him she already knew who he was. At least sort of. Chloe had mentioned him a few times, especially when she’d been complaining about something her boyfriend had done. She hadn’t known much about his background or how her cousin had met him.

Luckily for her, she thought, they’d never actually met. She’d been too busy to meet her cousin, who had never quite achieved her dream of working at the Daily Planet.

She’d been sharing an apartment with a roommate in Metropolis for a while until her roommate had announced she was getting married and Lois would have to find some place else to live. She’d looked in the real estate section of the paper, but the rentals had been very slim pickings. Even though she was getting a reasonable salary, the apartments she wanted were too expensive and the ones she could afford were dumps.

Chloe had offered to let her share the apartment above the coffee shop in Smallville. By then, Chloe and Clark had broken up. Over his job with Lex Luthor, or so she’d heard. Chloe had admitted that it had been happening for a while anyway. She had loved Clark, but had never been quite sure if it was a lifetime love.

She swallowed a lump in her throat, pushing away the sudden feeling of grief over her cousin. After the explosion at the Talon, she had walked away, even knowing that her cousin would worry about her. Chloe had moved away about six months before the explosion, taking a job in Star City. She hadn’t talked to her in three years and wasn’t even sure if her cousin knew she was still alive.

Shaking off the emotion, she finished dressing and left the apartment. She walked along the street, acutely aware of the admiring looks she received from men passing by. She ignored them.

The café was not full when she arrived. She spotted her quarry sitting in the corner, a mug in front of him. The man looked up and acknowledged her presence with a slight nod. She went up to the counter and ordered a coffee before moving to sit down at the table.

“What’s up?” she asked.

She studied the man. Stuart Campbell was slightly built and not much taller than her. When she had first met him, she had laughed silently at his baby-face. Even now, a little over four years since they’d met, he still looked younger than his age, which was about three years younger than her.

She’d met him through Bobby. She’d asked her friend to find someone who could help her hack into a few computer systems. He’d told her about a young prodigy who had graduated M.I.T and worked for LexCorp but also did hacking in his spare time. How Bobby had found him, she didn’t know and didn’t ask.

Stuart regarded her silently, waiting until her coffee was placed in front of her before he leaned back in his chair, trying to make it look like this was a casual conversation between friends.

“Well?” she asked.

“Phoenix Inc,” he said quietly.

“What about it?”

“I think someone’s onto us. I’ve thrown up firewall after firewall, but they manage to break through. It’s only a matter of time before they track me down.”

She frowned. “Do you think it’s Lex?”

“I don’t know. That’s the worst part. They’re trying to block the money transfers. I’ve been bouncing off different servers each time, but …”

She bit her lip. “We’ve got no choice then.”

She ordered him to stop the transfers, then withdraw everything from the overseas account and close it. If they couldn’t figure out where the money had gone, it would at least stall them.

She’d known it would happen sooner or later. Stuart was good, but he wasn’t infallible.

“So, what next then?” he asked.

She sipped her coffee and sat back. “You keep hacking into the system. Get as many of those files as you can.” She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Despite having worked for LexCorp three years ago, Stuart didn’t know where all the files were kept. He could only break in for short periods before the company’s security system would detect him and shut him out.

Maybe Clark would know, she thought.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark is concerned about a potential business acquisition

Clark was busy looking through some contracts when Lex came in. He dumped a sheaf of papers on Clark’s desk.

“What’s this?” Clark asked.

The bald man shrugged. “Potential acquisition.”

He quickly skimmed through the papers. Lex was negotiating a buyout of a company in Star City. One that Queen Industries was also interested in. The bald billionaire had somehow managed to learn what Oliver’s company was bidding and had gone one better. 

Clark was fairly sure his boss had used some kind of blackmail. It was a classic Luthor tactic. Long before he had taken over Luthorcorp and absorbed it into LexCorp, his father had used the same tactic. When Lionel had announced he was closing the fertiliser plant in Smallville, Lex had invested his own capital and asked some of the workers to provide the rest to save the plant and their jobs, creating LexCorp. Lionel had resorted to dirty tactics to undercut Lex’s bid for another company a few months later, before blackmailing shareholders into selling their shares. He’d forced the then sheriff, Ethan Miller, to hand over information, including everything from minor infringements to DUIs. 

“You sure this is wise given what’s been happening in the company?” he asked his friend.

It had been happening for a while. Someone had been sabotaging various projects. Clark was even sure someone was trying to hack into the system. There had been several attempts, not all of them unsuccessful. The hacker was smart enough to relay it through at least a hundred different servers and by the time the I.T. specialists were able to track him, the hacker was long gone. 

Clark knew some of the sabotage had come from the Justice League. There had been Project Leviathan, which his friend AC had sabotaged, causing Lex to lose a military contract worth millions of dollars. Another project, however, Project Ares, had been shut down before it could be completed as somehow information had gotten back to the military that a senator had been taking bribes to hide the project’s true purpose. Lex had been using soldiers who had supposedly died in combat to create super-soldiers. 

Before the Justice League had been able to inform the appropriate authorities, Sam Lane had got wind of it. Clark had heard that the General had been promoted and was now a military adviser for Congress. Senator Burke had been expelled from the senate for his actions. Fortunately, the government, knowing the Justice League was already on the case, had not forced a complete audit of LexCorp.

Lex had been furious over the matter, even going so far as to interrogate Clark, who managed to convince his boss that he knew nothing of any information getting back to the military. 

For a while, he’d wondered if Lois Lane had been behind it, but considering the reporter hadn’t been heard from in over three years, he had dismissed the thought. 

He looked at Lex questioningly. His boss didn’t appear too concerned over the problems.

“It’s Queen Industries,” he said. “I would think given who your ex has chosen to warm her bed lately, you would be only too happy to ensure their failure.”

That was a bit of a low blow, he thought. Chloe had been with Oliver Queen for over a year. Every picture of them together showed her happy and he had been just as happy for her. Not that he’d let Lex see that. 

“That’s in the past.”

“I see,” Lex said coolly. “So, the woman the other night.”

“What about her?”

“You seeing her again?”

Clark frowned. “What’s this sudden interest in my love life?” he asked. 

“Excuse me for wanting to see my friend happy instead of moping all the damn time!”

“Who I see outside of work isn’t really your concern,” he returned. “And who says I mope? I’m too busy to mope.”

The other man snorted. “Yeah. Right.”

“You know, maybe you should pay more attention to your kid than my extra-curricular activities.”

Lex glared. “Don’t tell me how to raise my son! What I do with Alexander is my own business!”

It really annoyed him that Lex was always pretending to be so concerned about Clark’s personal life but as soon as Clark turned it around on him, it was his ‘own business’. For someone who was supposed to be his friend, Lex certainly seemed to keep a lot to himself. 

If Clark was being generous, he could say that Lex did it because he’d been badly burned in the past when he’d shared his life with someone he’d trusted. Clark could understand that. Yet for all that he claimed to trust Clark, the other man acted the opposite. 

Maybe Clark didn’t know much about raising a child, but he knew what Lex’s upbringing was like. Lionel had been a cruel father who neglected his son, while having affairs behind his wife’s back. Lex had often told him he’d acted out as a teenager, hoping to get his father’s attention. Even negative attention was better than being ignored, he’d lamented once. 

“You know, you were forever complaining about how your dad never cared about what you did. It looks to me like you’re doing to Alex exactly the same thing Lionel did to you.”

“I don’t need advice from someone who hasn’t dated a woman in five years!”

Clark stared at him. What did that have to do with the way he was raising his son? Alex was six years old now and at the age where he would start to question why his father never spent any time with him. Part of the reason, he suspected, was Lana. Their marriage had ended rather acrimoniously, although it was still the longest Lex had ever been married. He’d claimed to have loved Lana, but Clark felt the man had only wanted her because she fit the ideal profile. The man often talked about his political ambitions and a pretty wife who also came from a fairly high-profile background would look good to voters. 

He’d suspected that Lex had manipulated Lana into marriage, getting his staff to change her contraceptive pills for placebos. Lana had been rather naïve when she’d begun dating Lex, thinking he really loved her. She’d finally left when she’d had enough, fighting for custody of her son. Lex had even manipulated the system there as well, claiming that Lana was a danger to the child.

Clark hadn’t voiced any of his suspicions to Lex. He’d pretended to take the other man’s side, providing the proverbial shoulder to cry on when the marriage had collapsed. Lex presumably didn’t know. He clearly didn’t care for any opinion that didn’t agree with his own, especially when it came to his personal life. 

Fortunately, Clark was saved from further argument when his phone beeped, alerting him to a meeting on his calendar. He glanced at it and realised it had come from Watchtower. Bruce, or Oliver, he thought. They had devised a system so when they wanted a meeting with him they would send it to his calendar on his phone.

“Sorry, Lex. I have a meeting in ten minutes. I’d forgotten about it until now.”

The bald man shrugged. “Just look over those papers and get them back to me by the end of the day. The meeting with Gould is on Friday and I want you with me.”

He frowned. “Are you expecting trouble?” Usually Lex only needed him at these meetings when he thought there was a chance things could turn sour. 

“Possibly. It’s always good to have insurance though.”

Great. Now I’m insurance, Clark thought as his boss left. He quickly tidied the papers on his desk and left the office. 

He quickly made his way to Watchtower. Oliver was at the helm this time. 

“Oliver?”

“Hey, Clark. Bruce had some things to take care of in Gotham.”

Clark shrugged. Bruce had other people working undercover in the local criminal families in Gotham. Three years earlier they’d managed to get enough evidence on Carmine Falcone and he was now rotting in a federal prison. They’d now set their sights on Moroni. 

“So, what’s up?” he asked.

“We think we might be close to tracking down Phoenix Inc,” Oliver said. 

“Really? I thought Bruce said there was nothing to find.”

“Not about Phoenix Inc itself,” a voice said. “But I think I’m close to finding the hacker.”

He turned and stared at the source of the voice, breaking out into a huge grin. “Chloe!”

He wrapped his arms around the petite blonde and hugged her. 

“Hey, Clark,” she said softly. 

He breathed in the scent of her perfume. It was one he’d given her a long time ago. She claimed it was still her favourite. 

He stood at arms’ length and looked her over. She looked good. No, she looked more than good. His gaze fell to her abdomen which was slightly rounded. She also had a gold band on her ring finger. 

“Are you …?” he asked.

She grinned. “Yeah. Almost five months now.” She quickly explained that she and Oliver had got married quietly once they’d learned she was pregnant. 

“Wow! That’s great! I’m so happy for you guys.”

Oliver squeezed his shoulder. “We weren’t sure …” he said, looking a little uncertain. 

Clark shook his head. The fight in the Talon had all been Chloe’s idea. Their so-called split had had to look as acrimonious as possible. He’d been reluctant, knowing that a lot of things could have come out in the fake fight. 

They’d been drifting apart for a while. It hadn’t been anyone’s fault. He understood that. They’d both finally come to the realisation that they were better off as friends than lovers. Chloe had been a little depressed over the fact that she had missed out on her dream of being a reporter at the Daily Planet. Not that she blamed Clark for that. It had just never seemed to work out. It had still caused a few arguments between them. 

When Clark had begun working for the Justice League, they’d decided it would be a good idea to look as if he’d cut ties with any of his old friends. Chloe had always been fairly vocal over her distrust of the Luthors and they’d figured Lex would trust Clark more if it looked like he’d chosen his job with LexCorp over Chloe. 

“So, uh, what’s this about the hacker?”

Chloe turned back to the computer she’d been working on. An image came up on screen.

“I’ve been tracking the money transfers and I’ve narrowed it down to two people,” she said. An image of a young Asian man came up on the screen. “Joe Kwan. He was born in the US but his parents emigrated from China about twenty years ago.”

Clark read the bio. Joe was only eighteen. 

“He’s a little young.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. The kid’s smart.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard and another image popped up, this time of a young man who could pass for his late teens or very early twenties. His bio listed him as older.

“Stuart Campbell,” Chloe said. “Graduated M.I.T, but it looks like he’s done some pretty heavyweight hacking of his own. Government databases, corporations. He went off-grid about three years ago. Right after he quit working for LexCorp.”

If he was off-grid, wouldn’t that have made him harder to track, Clark thought. Chloe answered that question as well. 

“Whoever was doing the hacking was doing it at a random time each time, so I created a program that would alert us and ping back to the source. It took a while as it went through a hundred different servers, all around the world, but we finally managed to track it back to a place here in Metropolis.”

“Stuart’s last-known address was in Metropolis,” he said, reading the file. “What makes you think he’s still a suspect?” Other than the fact the kid had worked for LexCorp. Clark didn’t even remember him. 

“Kwan is a student at Met U but he hasn’t gone off the radar. Of course, we could be completely off-base, but Kwan is acting like he’s got nothing to hide. So why would Stuart go off-grid?”

“Unless he’s the one who’s got something to hide. Okay, makes sense. What now?”

“I can answer that,” Oliver said. “Bart’s on stand-by so the next time this hacker tries to break in, he’ll check out every site.”

Clark bit his lip. It still might not work. Bart was fast but even he couldn’t check out thousands of internet cafes or libraries in the time the hacker was online. 

“It’s all we’ve got for now,” Chloe told him. “I know it’s not much.”

It was the best they could do, he thought. They needed to protect the hacker. Given Lex’s vindictiveness, if his security team found the hacker before the League did, they would never have the chance to find out why they were breaking into the system. 

Chloe took a break from the computer. Oliver was working on something on the other side of the room as she sat down on a couch. 

“So, how are you? Really? It feels like ages since we’ve talked.”

“I’m okay,” he said. He reached for her left hand and rubbed his finger over the gold band. “I can’t believe you and Oliver are married!” He grinned. “I mean, it’s great. Although, you know, if he ever does anything to hurt you, I will have to kick his ass.”

She grinned back. “Yeah, I bet you would.” She sobered. “Are you dating anyone?”

“No. Well … there was this woman the other night. She seemed … nice.”

Chloe frowned. “Okay, why the hesitation?”

He shrugged. There was nothing he could really put his finger on, except for the fact that Joanne had appeared rather cagey. As if reluctant to share anything really personal. It almost felt like she’d been using a script. Like she’d created a back-story in her mind.

When he told his friend, she bit her lip.

“Clark, I might not be the best person to give you advice on this, but are you sure that was what you were feeling or do you think you might have let the past cloud your judgement? I mean, I don’t blame you for being a little gun-shy.”

He shook his head. He and Chloe were long over. He had got to a point where he could be happy for her in her marriage and her impending motherhood, without any jealousy or regret. Despite how close they had always been, he often wondered if perhaps they had expected too much of each other. He’d loved her and still did, but it wasn’t the kind of love he’d witnessed with his parents. 

“Is it because of your … you know,” she said, waving her hand in an up-up-and-away gesture. 

That was part of it, he thought. Chloe had been the first person he’d ever told about his abilities. He’d known they could never be together as a couple if he wasn’t honest with her. They’d had a few arguments over the years about his abilities. Mostly because Chloe was the type of person who could never really let something go. She’d see something he’d done, or he’d suddenly disappear on her and she would call him on it. He couldn’t have expected her to just drop it without saying a word, although when they’d begun their third year of high school, that was basically what she’d done. 

When they’d graduated high school, he had told her everything. She’d confessed that she’d always known he was different but had slowly realised that she needed to back off and wait for him to trust her with his secret. She’d once told him that it wouldn’t have been fair to either of them if she’d basically blackmailed him for his secret, refusing to go out with him unless he told her the truth. 

Clark didn’t know enough about Joanne yet to know if he could trust her, but then, that was what dating was for. To get to know the other person.

“There’s something about this woman, Chloe. I don’t know what it is, but I … “

“You feel something. Something more than what we had.” She looked over at her husband and smiled softly. “I think I know what you mean. It’s the same feeling I had when I fell in love with Oliver.”

The blond man looked up. “She say something nice about me?” he asked.

Chloe wrinkled her nose at him. “I’m talking about you, not at you, Queen. Get back to work.”

“You bossing me around, woman?” 

“Yep!”

He shrugged. “Okeydokey.” He returned to his work. Clark laughed at the couple. He never would have pictured Oliver saying ‘okeydokey’ in a million years. His friend certainly appeared more relaxed than Clark had ever seen him. Oliver tended to take his work very seriously. Of course, Clark suspected that had a lot to do with the fact that he wasn’t as self-assured as he appeared.

Oliver had once confessed he’d been something of a bully in high school. Having lost his parents at a young age, he’d been brought up by nannies who had no idea how to handle a young boy who had lost his whole world. He’d been spoiled and arrogant by the time he reached his teens. An incident when he was sixteen had led to him drinking and partying like there was no tomorrow, using the alcohol as a crutch. Two years later he’d been marooned on an island, forced to use his wits to survive. 

When he’d returned to the States, it was as if the world had gone on without him and he was no longer sure of his place. Working for the Justice League had given him a new focus and a new purpose. 

Clark turned back to look at Chloe. He realised that as good as she had been for Oliver, he had been just as good for her. She’d never been secure about her looks, saying her cousin had been considered prettier. 

“You know, if you are at all worried, I can do a background check on this woman,” she suggested, reminding him of their conversation.

He smiled. “Thanks, but I think I’d rather get to know her the old-fashioned way.”

“So you’ll ask her out?”

“I’ll ask her out.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s about time you got back out there, Clark Kent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so, as crazy as it sounds, I think there was a good chance that if Chloe and Clark had got together in the show, she never would have got the job at the DP. She also never would have got mixed up with Lionel. Sort of a cause and effect thing. Since Clark's getting together with Lana at the end of season two was the thing that sent Chloe in Lionel's direction, it stands to reason that that led to her going after Lionel, getting stories published etc. And if she hadn't had that column in the DP, Pauline Kahn wouldn't have looked at her twice. So that's why in this story, she never got that internship.


	10. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois is nervous about her date

She had no idea why she was so nervous as she waited on the street for Clark to pick her up for dinner. He’d called her the night before and asked her out. Of course, it was what she had been aiming for, but for some reason her heart had skipped a beat when she’d heard his voice. 

She had dressed with care in a white sleeveless dress with a matching bolero shrug. The side panels had been decorated with three rows of sequins, creating a dressier effect so the look was dressy enough for a restaurant but not so dressy that it looked like she was going to the opera or something. 

She didn’t know what it was and definitely didn’t understand the feeling, but ever since she’d met Clark, she had experienced what she could only determine was butterflies in her stomach. Every time she caught his gaze. She tried to tell herself that he wasn’t who he seemed to be, which was a very nice, intelligent man. She’d spent much of the past two days since they’d met giving herself a stern talking to about not believing what was on the surface and remembering that Clark Kent worked for Lex, the man responsible for her life being flipped upside down. 

Yet none of that mattered. No matter how much she tried, she just couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot when she thought of him. 

She’d had relationships before. When she was in her early teens, she had had a crush on a young man who had been an army brat, the same as her. She had managed to steal a bottle of her father’s whiskey when they’d been based at Fort Addelson. She had shared the alcohol with Wes Keenan. They’d been fooling around in a storage warehouse and she’d tried to kiss him. 

Some years ago she had learned that Wes had supposedly been killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, where he’d been stationed as a Green Beret. She’d believed it, until his wife Jodi had sent a letter to the Daily Planet saying she believed her husband hadn’t died in the crash and had actually been turned into some kind of super-soldier by Lex Luthor.

Her other relationships had been fairly brief and nothing really spectacular. It wasn’t that she didn’t date. It was that most of those dates tended to take second place to her work. She had entered journalism with the ambition to become the feminine version of Woodward and Bernstein. She had never pictured a white picket fence in her future. 

It was odd. Chloe had once accused her of being cynical about men, refusing to put any trust or faith in them, claiming she was better off without one. So why was she getting so uptight about a first date with Clark Kent? It wasn’t like the guy was anything special, she told herself, other than being insanely hot. When she’d been researching him, she told herself that his looks were nothing spectacular. Now that she’d actually met him, she had realised she’d under-estimated his attractiveness. 

She sighed as she looked up the street for any sign of his car. She really needed to get a grip on herself. All they’d done was talk. That was hardly enough time to judge the man on his looks, or personality. 

The beep of a car horn startled her out of her thoughts. She stared at the car pulling up to the kerb. A black Maserati Convertible. Clark grinned at her from the driver’s seat. He put the car in ‘park’ and got out, coming around the front of the car to open the passenger side door. 

“Your carriage awaits,” he said, waving his hand with a flourish. 

She snickered. There he went, being all cute again. The other night, when she’d been asking him all about his life in Smallville, he’d played it coy with a cute, ‘aw shucks’ kind of look. If she hadn’t known any better, she probably would have fallen completely for that farmboy charm. 

She got in the car and relaxed against the leather seat. The car had that new, clean smell which suggested it was the latest model. Clark got in the driver’s seat and smiled at her as he buckled his seat belt. 

“You look great,” he said. 

She studied him. He’d worn a navy-blue sport coat and black jeans that showed powerful thighs. The look was casual and under-stated; nothing like the outfit he’d worn the other night. She had noticed that evening how he had appeared more than a little uncomfortable with the formal suit he’d been wearing. 

“So, uh, where are we going?” she asked. 

“There’s this great French restaurant I know,” he said. “A friend recommended it.”

She nodded. “Sounds great. I love French cuisine.”

He grinned at her before pulling out into the traffic. “I figured since you’d spent some time in Europe you’d appreciate it.”

“You trying to impress me, Clark Kent?”

“Is it working?” he asked.

She laughed and nodded. She studied the interior of the car, occasionally glancing over at him as he drove. He appeared to be a good driver, if a little over-cautious, keeping to well under the inner-city speed limit. 

“This is a great car,” she said. 

“I borrowed it from Lex. I didn’t think you’d rather I turned up in the truck for the first date.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. He had a truck? She guessed he meant a farm truck, used for hauling hay or something. Did he really think she cared about stuff like that? Considering she’d spent many nights as a teenager attending monster truck rallies. She had never thought of herself as a girly girl and had usually preferred wearing jeans and t-shirts instead of skirts. If she had been able to get away with it, she would have worn her jeans to prom. Then again, she had never actually made it to prom. She’d stolen a tank and had been caught before she’d even got to the school gates. 

She caught him eyeing her before turning his attention back to the road, pulling up at a traffic signal. He appeared to be a little anxious at her sudden silence and she wondered if he was just as nervous about this date as she was. 

“Well, just so you know, in future, you don’t have to borrow a car just to impress me.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he replied, visibly relaxing.

She chewed her lower lip, trying to think of something else to talk about. 

“So, what’s it like working for Lex? I mean, is he a good boss?”

Clark huffed a little. “He has his moments.” She caught an edge to his tone and wondered what that was about. “Don’t get me wrong. I mean, he can be a really good friend, but as a boss he can be, hmm, kind of demanding? I mean, I get it. Being the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar business can be quite stressful and he’s used to being ruthless, I guess.”

She couldn’t help wondering why Clark was trying to defend Lex even though it sounded like he didn’t really believe what he was saying. He continued to have an edge to his voice that suggested the two men were not as friendly as Clark tried to make them out to be. 

She’d heard just how ruthless Lex Luthor could be. He didn’t tolerate mistakes in his employees. Stuart had told her he’d been close to being fired from LexCorp because he’d missed one little security breach. It hadn’t even been that serious! 

When she’d been investigating what had happened to Michael Davis, she had discovered he had also borne the brunt of Lex’s foul temper. The man hadn’t exactly been a perfect angel, considering he’d had a record. Davis had been arrested several times for burglary but had cleaned up his act when he’d begun working for LexCorp. 

Rumours had spread that someone inside the company was looking for a crew to break into another company and steal information. Information which would have proved very valuable to Lex himself. Davis had been approached to join the team but had refused, saying he had a family to take care of and wasn’t about to get involved in anything illegal. He’d sent an email to his boss telling him what had happened. The next thing he knew, he’d been arrested by local police who had told him he was suspect in a million-dollar heist and murder. A man had been killed during the heist.

The kicker was that the police had had security footage clearly showing Davis committing the robbery. He had no alibi at the time of the incident and no way of proving it wasn’t him. Yet she’d found herself believing him, especially after he’d been killed. She had learned that there had been a patient at Belle Reve, a girl named Tina Greer, who somehow had the ability to shape-shift. Further digging had revealed another woman named Eva, with the same last name and the same ability. She’d never been able to prove if the two women were related. 

She was sure Lex had been behind the plan to break into the company and had framed Davis so he couldn’t talk. He clearly hadn’t counted on the man trying to tell his story anyway, or on Lois’ investigation. 

“Here we are.”

She looked up and realised they had pulled up outside the restaurant. A valet was waiting as Clark stopped the car. He left the engine running and got out, coming around to open her door and take her hand. 

She was just as impressed when she walked into the restaurant. It had been decorated in the style of a bistro with genuine leather seats along one wall and leather-covered chairs at each table. A chalkboard stood on an easel in the foyer, proclaiming the specials of the evening. A man in a white silk shirt with black tie stood ready to greet them. He spoke in a cultured French accent. 

“Good evening Monsieur and Mademoiselle, my name is Louis and I am your maitre d’ for this evening.” Clark smiled at the man. 

“Good evening, Louis. I have a reservation for two under Kent.”

The man glanced at the paper in front of him and nodded. “Of course, sir. Your table is all ready for you. This way, please.”

Clark kept up polite conversation as they were led to a quiet corner of the restaurant. He’d obviously asked for somewhere fairly intimate as the table was separate from the booths. 

She had learned early on to pay attention to how her dining companion treated others, knowing that the worse they acted, the more likely it was that they weren’t a nice person. She was more than impressed to realise that Clark was not only polite to the host but he was just as courteous to their server when she brought them a bottle of wine. 

Was it wrong of her to have wanted Clark to act at least a little less like a gentleman? She supposed it would have made it easier to hate him if he had. The trouble was, despite this being their first date, she found herself liking him more and more. 

Damn it!


	11. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The date continues.

Clark wanted to show off, even just a little. He’d taken French in high school and the teacher had told him he had an ear for languages. He’d been able to understand Kryptonian since his second year of high school.

He and a friend, Pete, had been dirt-biking out along the trail in Palmer Woods when he’d hit a rock and fallen head-first into what he’d initially thought was a sink-hole. It had turned out to be the roof of a cave which had been weakened by construction going on a few hundred yards from the site. 

Those caves turned out to be a major discovery with a strong connection to his heritage. It was there that he’d learned a little about who he was. Thanks to Lex and his insatiable curiosity, he’d come across a metal disc which had fit in his lifepod. Eventually the disc had given off some kind of signal, leading him to the caves where his native language had been downloaded. Ever since, he’d been able to easily learn another language, although he’d stuck to the most well-known ones. The ones with different dialects were not as easy to absorb. 

He’d chosen the French restaurant only because he’d spent a little time in France himself, and like his dinner companion, enjoyed the cuisine. He loved Italian as well, but the restaurant he’d taken her to was about as close to authentic French cooking as it could get. The chef had actually trained at Le Cordon Bleu, considered to be the guardian of French culinary technique. Any chef who had trained at the founding school in Paris was bound to be exceptional. 

The server gave them time to study the menu. Clark looked at Joanne, wondering how she was faring, since it was all in French. He noticed her frowning a little.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s just been a little while since I’ve read French. I’m a little out of practice.”

“I can order for you, if you like.”

She nodded and smiled. “As long as you don’t order Les cuisses de grenouilles or Escargot we’ll be okay.”

He laughed and assured her he wouldn’t order either of those dishes. 

“Don’t worry. I spent a couple of weeks in France myself and even I wasn’t that daring.” He looked down at his menu. “Hmm, how about this? Blanc de Poulet farci?”

“Poulet … chicken, stuffed with …” She looked like she was reading the notes under the entry in the menu. “Goats cheese? Okay, that sounds good.” 

“How about Crème Brulee for dessert?” he asked.

She nodded. “That sounds perfect.”

When the server returned, he gave their order. Joanne relaxed in her chair, sipping her wine. 

“So, you said you spent some time in France,” she said. “Where did you go?”

He’d had to go with Lex for a meeting in Paris, but he’d managed to get in some vacation time as well. He had heard Lana had been staying in Paris and wanted to talk to her but when he’d gone to visit her last-known address, she had already moved on. 

He’d had a crush on the brunette in grade school but she’d never been interested in him romantically. They’d grown up one-mile apart. Her aunt, Nell, had owned a house a mile away from the Kent farm but Lana had never visited them. 

During their freshman year at Smallville High, Clark had slowly developed a friendship with Lana, hoping it might develop into something more. Until he’d begun dating Chloe. 

A few months later, Nell met and moved in with a man who had worked as an insurance adjuster. Dean had been in Smallville to handle claims from those whose properties had been damaged in the tornado that had struck that summer. When Nell had told her niece they were moving in with Dean, Lana had reluctantly moved to Metropolis. 

Lex had decided to run for the Senate when he’d bumped into Lana and her aunt at a political rally. He’d later told Clark he’d felt Lana would have been perfect to bolster his image in the eyes of the public. He’d blamed the fact that he lost on his opponent, who was a family man. He’d had analysts tell him that the voters had trusted him less because he was young and single. 

It was telling that whenever Lex needed something to give him good PR, he trotted out his son. Clark was disgusted when a local newspaper – thankfully not the Daily Planet, which would never have sunk to that level – had done a fluff piece on Lex and Alexander, written in such a way that it praised Lex’s parenting. The subject of the divorce had been glossed over, the blame laid squarely at the feet of the ex-Mrs Luthor. 

As much as Clark had admired the older man in the beginning, there were things he really hated about Lex. He’d had some practice at hiding his feelings, but they did sometimes slip out. 

He wasn’t particularly worried at what he’d said to his date earlier. He’d noticed she’d shown a little interest in his attitude toward his boss, but he figured a lot of people didn’t like their co-workers sometimes. Of course, she didn’t know they’d once been close friends, which would have made what he’d said sound a little odd. 

As they waited for their dinners to be served, he talked to her about Paris. He hadn’t spent long enough in the city to get much of an impression but she had spent a few months there.

“What do you like about Paris?” he asked, genuinely interested.

“It’s hard to say without sounding, I don’t know, I bit snobbish, I guess. I mean, Paris has its problems like everywhere else. It’s as vulnerable as other cities, especially to terrorism, but you know, there’s this indomitable spirit about the people. Yeah, you get your snobs who think they’re above it all, but then you meet the average Parisian and they … well … Like that terrorist attack they had a few months ago. I read a few of the news reports and there were people saying how tragic it was but it only made them stronger and more determined to band together to drive out hate. 

“The other thing I loved about Paris was the history and the buildings. I mean, I’m not talking about the Eiffel Tower. It’s great and everything and it’s a big drawcard for tourists, but you can only see that so many times before it gets boring. There are so many old buildings there and some of them would have been around before the revolution, you know? They have people go in and refurbish them but preserve the old-world look at the same time. The people care about their history. Not like here in Metropolis. I mean, how many buildings in the city can you say are actually as old as the city? Instead you get these big steel and glass monstrosities.”

He knew exactly which building she was talking about. LexCorp Tower was a sixty-two-storey building, constructed from steel and glass. It was barely twenty years old, while its closest neighbour, the Daily Planet building, was at least one hundred years old. 

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said. “I once visited this castle in England and it had to be at least five hundred years old. I can’t imagine anything like that here.”

The food came out and they focused their attention on eating their meals. Joanne clearly loved it as she moaned in pleasure. Clark almost choked on his mouthful and lifted his glass to sip his wine. 

Joanne grinned at him. “Are you blushing, Mr Kent?”

“You, uh, were sounding like …”

Her grin became wider. “Like the deli scene in When Harry Met Sally?” she asked wickedly. 

He frowned at her. “Heyyy, I thought you said you hated romantic comedies?”

“No, I said they were cliched. I never said I hadn’t seen any of them. Besides, that scene is pretty famous.”

He swallowed. Why did he get the feeling she was the type to re-enact such a scene, or at least pretend to, just to see if she could embarrass him? 

“You know, Smallville, I never pictured you for the shy farmboy type.”

“Smallville?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. I mean, that’s where you’re from, isn’t it?”

He’d forgotten he’d told her that. “But why the nickname?”

She shrugged. “’Cause it’s fun. Besides, what else would I call you? Farmboy? Clarkie?”

He scowled. “Not Clarkie.”

“Is it the ‘ie’ you don’t like? Because you know, you could always change your name.”

“Thanks but I happen to like my name.” After all, his mother had named him the day his parents had found him. Her maiden name had been Clark and it had just seemed to suit, she’d once told him.

“Then ‘Smallville’ it is.”

As they continued to talk over dinner, he began to get that familiar feeling that he knew her from somewhere. While she was great to talk to, she seemed to love yanking his chain by being snarky, teasing him over his background.

Chloe had been snarky at times. When they’d first become friends, it had driven him crazy. She had appeared to love the fact that she could get him riled up over the smallest things. He’d eventually learned how to get her back but it had taken a while. 

He wondered if that was part of the attraction to Joanne. She reminded him a little of Chloe. 

They left the restaurant shortly after nine. Not wanting the evening to end so soon, Clark decided to take her for a drive up into the hills. There was a lookout close to the observatory where he could park and look at the stars. 

She looked at him with a slight frown. “What are we doing here?” she asked.

“I, uh, thought you’d like Clark Kent’s ‘tour of the galaxy’,” he said.

She gave a peal of laughter. “Tour of the galaxy?”

He pointed up at the stars. “The galaxy.”

She stopped laughing, staring at him in amazement. “You amaze me, Smallville. You really are one of a kind, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “They broke the mould when they made me.”

She snickered and turned to look out at the night sky. They were up high enough that the lights from the city below didn’t distract from the sight before them. They sat in silence for a while, just looking up at the stars. Clark began pointing out the various constellations.

“It really is beautiful,” she said. She gasped and pointed. “Shooting star.”

He followed her gaze. He could just see the light from the flaming meteor as it descended. 

“You know, the Kawatche believe that a shooting star is the spirit of a shaman, come to warn them.”

“Well, that’s cheery,” she said. “The Kawatche?”

“They’re this Native American tribe that live just out of Smallville. A few years ago, Lex’s father was building this office park and it was making the ground unstable. We found this cave that the Kawatche had been searching for for years.”

“’We’?” 

“Me and a friend of mine. Pete. He’s a lawyer in Wichita.” He had been friends with Pete Ross since grade school. Pete's parents had decided to divorce their junior year. Pete had moved to Wichita with his mother. Part of the reason was that he had found out the truth about Clark's secret and hadn't been able to handle it. For a while, his friend had messed around, but had eventually decided to study law.

“Oh. So, I heard Lex’s father died in prison. What happened?”

“He had liver disease. It was apparently too far advanced for a transplant. He had only been in prison about eight months.”

She made a face. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

He frowned at her. The way she spoke made it sound like she was very familiar with Lionel Luthor. 

“You knew Lionel?” he asked.

She balked. “Uh, no, not really. I mean, I read the news story when he got convicted.”

Clark frowned as she turned away. He had the odd impression that she knew far more than that. Something in his gut told him to use his super-hearing. 

“Idiot!” Joanne whispered. 

Now what the heck did that mean?


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois gets a tip

She woke to the sound of someone knocking on her door. Yawning she got out of bed and grabbed a robe before going to answer. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the hallway and groaned loudly. She looked horrible. Her hair was tangled and she hadn’t quite got all the make-up off, so what was left had smudged around her eyes, making her look like a raccoon.

The knock came again, heavier this time, as if the visitor was getting impatient.

“All right, all right,” she called, grumbling. She’d been out late the night before and didn’t like being roused this early. 

She looked through the peephole, frowning as she recognised the man on the other side, then turned each of the three deadbolts and unlocked the door. She stared at the visitor.

“What are you doing here so early?” she asked.

Bobby smirked at her. “Early? Babe, it’s ten. Ish. I’ve been up for hours.”

She yawned. “Yeah? Well I only got to bed around four. What do you want?”

“You got anything to eat?” he asked, eyeing her before moving past her to rummage through the cupboards in her kitchen. “Seriously? Noodles?”

“I eat out a lot. Bobby …”

“Paydirt!” he exclaimed as he looked through the contents of her refrigerator and pulled out a pot of yoghurt. He dipped a finger in, making her recoil slightly in disgust. “Well, it ain’t quite the good stuff but I’ll let you off. This time.”

“Bobby …” she began.

He looked at her, his gaze sweeping down over her body. She’d barely paused to get undressed when she’d got in the night before, stripping off her pants and dumping them on the floor of the bedroom. She’d been so tired she’d fallen asleep almost as soon as she’d got into bed. 

“Nice legs, kid,” Bobby said. She pulled at the edges of her robe, trying to cover herself. 

“Look …” She was tired and really not in the mood for banter. 

She’d been doing recon at the plant in Smallville. Some years ago she had heard a story that a man who had worked as a janitor had been exposed to some kind of mineral poisoning. He’d taken a few high schoolers hostage and threatened the workers at the plant until Lionel Luthor told the truth about some kind of experiment he’d been running on a level that the billionaire had claimed didn’t exist.

She had discovered that the so-called non-existent level had been used to hide dangerous experiments with people known to have been exposed to meteor rock. The workers on the other levels knew nothing about it, having been told by their employer that that level was now closed. 

From what she could tell, those experiments were still going on. Only now, Lex was being more cautious about it. As far as she knew, Clark knew nothing about them. Not that she’d tried too hard to prod him for information. 

They’d gone out a few times already for dinner and she’d asked him to go with her to see a film at the local film festival. He’d also gone with her to the theatre to see a play. She hadn’t dared ask him to a monster truck rally, figuring if she did anything that linked her to her old life, he might get suspicious. 

She’d slipped up a couple of times, berating herself quietly on each occasion. Clark hadn’t said anything and she wondered if he’d noticed the slips. It worried her. She was normally on her guard, making sure she didn’t say anything which might cause her companion to ask questions. Yet with Clark she found herself relaxing her guard a little. 

As much as she hated to admit it, she liked him. He was nothing like she thought he was. She had believed the farmboy charm was an act, but the more time she spent with him, she realised it wasn’t. He really was everything he appeared to be. 

The sound of fingers snapping brought her back down to Earth. 

“Yo, babe. You awake?”

She scowled at her visitor. “Yes, I’m awake,” she said crossly. “And don’t call me ‘babe’. I hate that!”

“Whatever!” Bobby said with a shrug. “I found someone you might want to talk to. He says he did a couple of jobs for Luthor. Might be doing another one.”

“What’s his name?”

“Schott. But he usually goes by the moniker Toyman.”

She frowned. “Toyman? What’s that about?”

Bobby shrugged again. “He’s got this place. Warehouse of some kind. Filled with toys.”

Well, that sort of explained the moniker, she thought. She became concerned when Bobby went on to tell her that he’d seen the Toyman working on one of those toys, planting what could only be an explosive device. 

“So what is he?” she asked. 

“Figure he’s some kind of contractor.” Bobby handed her a slip of paper with the address of the warehouse. “Be careful though. Guy’s completely whacked.”

“I think I can handle myself,” she said. 

“I ain’t kidding around,” he said. “I mean it. This guy is seriously nuts.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she told him. 

If it helped her get what she needed without basically having to prostitute herself, then maybe she didn’t have to involve Clark at all. Maybe they had only been out a few times but she didn’t want to hurt him. 

Had she stopped to think about it, she would have questioned why she felt that way. She had gone into this prepared to guard her emotions, to not feel anything. Emotions could get her killed, she had decided. It had very nearly already got her killed. 

She still didn’t know what or who had saved her the night the Talon had blown up. All she could remember of that night was a sudden feeling almost of vertigo. She’d stood on the street, dizzy, even a little nauseous, watching the building going up in flames. She’d looked around hurriedly but hadn’t seen anyone. Of course, she knew from her research that there were plenty of suspects with the capability of super-human speed, but without having seen their face she had no way of identifying them. 

She’d quickly become aware of cars arriving and turned, running toward an alleyway. She had figured that the best thing she could do was disappear into the darkness. From that moment on, it was better that the world believe Lois Lane was dead. That was why she needed to guard her emotions, she told herself. If she let herself relax her guard for even a second, word would get back to Lex. She just knew it.

Bobby left a short time later and she went to shower. Half an hour later she stood in front of her closet, a towel wrapped around her and secured tightly above her breasts, contemplating her wardrobe. 

Just what did someone wear to talk to a psycho-nutjob anyway? she wondered. 

She decided on black jeans and a black shirt. It wasn’t exactly her best colour but figured it would make her seem a little more intimidating. She applied fresh make-up, making the lines around her eyes a little darker. It wasn’t quite a Goth look but it did serve to make her eyes look a little more open. 

The warehouse where Winslow Schott lived was located about half a mile from the river, among a group of other warehouses. Unlike those, which seemed to be fully in operation, the building at the address Bobby had given her was badly run-down. The exterior boards were rotting and looked as if they had been eaten by termites. 

A door was half-hanging off its hinges. Like the rest of the exterior, much of the paint had peeled, exposing the bare boards. She was surprised the building was still standing, given the ferocious storms that tended to blow in from upriver. 

She entered the warehouse, blinking rapidly to allow her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She glanced above and saw a few windows, all covered in grime. There were probably only about half a dozen still reasonably intact. The others had all been smashed. 

A faint squeaking sound had her looking down and she realised there were rats in the corner. She continued walking through into the main part of the warehouse, refusing to let an old childhood fear keep her from her mission. 

Bobby had been right about one thing. There were toys scattered all over the warehouse floor. Considering the state of the room, she was surprised that the toys weren’t broken. There were teddy bears, toy robots and electronic games. What looked like a Newton’s Cradle was sitting on what was clearly a workbench. Various tools were spread around the toy. She recognised one of them as a tool used by munitions officers in the army. 

“Oh, a visitor!” a voice exclaimed. The voice was male but had a slightly higher pitch. “I like visitors, don’t you, Ranat?”

She started when she turned and saw a pudgy man with lank, greasy hair holding a filthy rat.

“Ranat?” she asked, watching as the man began petting the rat as if it was a beloved pet. 

The man babbled something about an alien rat-like species which were bounty hunters and a brother Ranat chasing a bounty on Tatooine. She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, recognising the name of a fictional planet from a movie series. Geek, she thought. 

The man stopped petting the rat and stared at her. He stepped forward, reaching out a hand but she stepped back.

“Who are you?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Oh, but that’s not how you play the game,” he said. “Do you like playing games?”

“No!” she said shortly. 

He canted his head, his eyes appearing beady behind blue-tinted lenses, then looked past her at the workbench. He dropped the rat on the bench. The rodent quickly scurried away, dropping off the bench and disappearing in amongst some trash on the other side of the room.

The man, who she assumed was Schott, picked up a teddy bear. She saw some kind of mechanism through a small slit in the toy’s fur.

“The world moves so fast today,” he said, stroking the fur. “People forget how much better they had it as kids. When hours seemed like days and a favourite toy could be a child’s best friend. Toys are powerful things, you know.”

“I’m sure they are,” she said, wondering what he was babbling on about.

“Who are you?” he asked again, turning to stare at her. “Why are you here?”

“I needed to talk to you. You are the Toyman, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they call me,” he said distantly. “I like toys,” he continued, once again petting the fur. “So pure, so innocent.”

Sure, how pure could they be if he was planting explosives in them, she thought. 

“Tell me about Lex Luthor,” she said. “Did he hire you?”

“Oh, he hired me,” Schott replied. “But it was my pleasure.”

“To do what?” she asked. 

Schott sighed. “I don’t think I want to play anymore,” he mumbled. “Leave now.”

She found herself unceremoniously pushed out of the room. Bobby had been right about the man being a nutjob, she thought. The man kept going on about games and toys, his tone becoming increasingly childlike. 

She knew she wasn’t going to get anything further out of him. Looked like she needed to do a bit of research. 

She decided to hunker down and wait until Schott left the warehouse. She camped out in an area within sight of the building. Several hours later, the Toyman left, taking a bag with him. 

She returned to the warehouse. The building hadn’t been locked, but she figured no one would consider there was anything worth stealing anyway. She began looking around for something to tell her what the man was up to. The Newton’s Cradle was gone from the workbench. 

There was another bench covered in a canvas sheet. She picked up one corner of the sheet to look underneath, frowning at the model. She had never visited the building herself, but she recognised what she was looking at. Queen Towers. The building belonging to Queen Industries. 

She spied a notebook under the cover and picked it up. Schott had made notes which looked more to her like chicken scratch, but she guessed it was some kind of code. Sighing, she dropped the notebook. As she did so, a photograph slipped from between the pages. Her frown deepened. Oliver Queen.

Now what could the man have against the Star City billionaire? 

She left the warehouse and made a call on her phone.

“It’s me. Urgent job. See what you can find out about Oliver Queen.” Stuart sounded confused but promised he would find out whatever he could. She told him to work quickly and call her back when he found something. 

Ten minutes later, Stuart called her back, telling her Oliver was in town for some business meetings. Apparently there was some kind of deal he was negotiating and the meeting was taking place at Queen Tower. The hacker added that he had managed to download a file on the same company from LexCorp’s system. It sounded like Lex was interested in the same company. 

She ordered Stuart to send an anonymous warning to Oliver and a location on Winslow Schott. She figured Oliver would contact the authorities. 

She just hoped she wasn’t too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Tatooine thing - I figured Schott would be the Star Wars geek type and would know obscure facts from the series.
> 
> In the original story, I had the guy tip off the authorities about a hydroponics store supplying drugs.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark gets an urgent message.

_SOS_

Clark frowned as the code came through as a vibration on the phone in his pocket, wondering what the emergency was. He glanced over toward Lex, who was holding court at his usual meeting with the LexCorp board. The bald man was talking as if he loved the sound of his own voice, which probably wasn’t very far from the truth.

He excused himself from the meeting, telling the security guard who stood by the doorway with a bored expression that he was going to the bathroom. The guard shrugged disinterestedly and stepped aside, allowing Clark to leave the room.

He walked down the hallway to the bathroom, making sure he was seen by the camera monitoring from the corner and opened the door. He quickly x-rayed the room, making sure it was clear, before pulling out his phone. The code had been followed up with a text message.

 _Queen Tower_.

There was nothing else forthcoming. Clark guessed it was urgent enough that they didn’t want to waste time. Or words.

He checked the corridor and made sure the camera had changed direction so it was no longer pointed toward the bathroom door and launched into superspeed. He left the bathroom and blurred up the stairs to the roof of the building before launching himself into the air.

Queen Tower was approximately three blocks from the tower of LexCorp Plaza, which consisted of LexCorp Tower and two smaller buildings flanking the skyscraper. Both smaller buildings housed shops that Lex had leased to various owners. Lionel had bought the buildings twenty years earlier to create Luthor Plaza, not out of any interest in owning retail property but just because he could, according to Lex.

The tower which housed Queen Industries was far less ostentatious. Oliver Queen believed in practicality rather than the whole ‘mine is bigger than yours’ mentality that Lex seemed to revel in. While the tower was a similar construction of steel and glass, its shape was more aesthetically pleasing in the Metropolis skyline. Instead of overshadowing surrounding buildings, it blended in.

When Clark had first met Oliver, the other man had been living in an apartment built within the Metropolis Clock Tower. While it worked well, Clark had found the décor a little too modernist for his tastes. The office in Queen Tower, however, was decorated in warm tones of red and brown, making it feel welcoming.

It also helped that the office was surrounded by a balcony which made it far easier for Clark to come and go.

Making sure no one who didn’t need to be there was around, he landed on the balcony. Oliver was waiting for him, quickly explaining that he was due to have a meeting with the Queen Industries’ board over a proposed acquisition.

“We got a message saying someone may have constructed an explosive device,” he said.

“Who?”

“We’ll get to that. I couldn’t call anyone else in on this. Time is a factor.”

Clark nodded his understanding and began to scan the room. Oliver had decorated the office with a few ‘toys’. He noticed the Newton’s Cradle sitting on the credenza. He almost overlooked it but when he x-rayed he saw a series of tiny electronic panels.

“There,” he said, pointing to the cradle.

“What?” Oliver went to pick it up.

“Don’t touch it,” Clark told him. “There’s wiring inside.”

“How is that possible?” his friend asked. It appeared totally innocuous. A device crafted out of chrome with what looked like ball bearings hanging on thin wire.

As Clark moved to examine it more closely, the ‘toy’ activated by itself, the first ball-bearing apparently moving of its own accord.

“Get back!” he said, shielding the room with his body. Within seconds, he felt the concussion of a powerful explosion. It had clearly been designed to take out the entire room. Had Oliver not been warned and told members of his board to stay away, they very likely would have been killed.

Oliver got up from behind one of the leather chairs and stared at Clark. “Whoa!”

“Whoa is right.” He scanned the room again but found nothing. “Who would be skilled enough to create a bomb out of a Newton’s Cradle?”

“I might have an idea. You should get back to Lex’s meeting. He’s probably wondering where you got to.”

Clark glanced at his watch. It was an old Timex. The crystal was badly scratched and the leather strap had been replaced many times but he refused to buy a new one. It was the watch his father had worn nearly all his life. Hiram Kent had given it to Jonathan on his tenth birthday.

“It’s only been five minutes,” Clark told him. “Less, even.”

“Still, we don’t need Lex asking questions. Go. I’ll contact you later.”

Clark returned to the meeting. Lex shot him a questioning look and Clark put a hand on his abdomen, shrugging at his boss. He had kept up the pretence that he was fully human and prone to the same kind of health problems as anyone else.

The meeting wrapped up a few minutes later. Lex smirked at him.

“I warned you about eating chilli,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Clark returned. The bald man snickered and walked with him upstairs to his office suite.

“How are things going with Jo?” he asked.

“Pretty good, actually. She’s cooking dinner for us tomorrow night.”

“She cooks?” Lex asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yeah, she cooks. She’s actually not that bad. We had dinner at my place the other night.”

“Oh, well, that’s great. You two got any plans this weekend?”

Clark shook his head. “Not so far, but I can check with her. Why?”

“I’d like to get to know the woman who’s put a smile on your face. Next thing I know, you’ll be belting out show tunes or something. I’m sure I even heard you humming the other day. At least, I think that was humming. I don’t know. It sounded to me more like a buzzsaw.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Anyway, I’m having a gathering at the mansion this weekend. Bring your lady friend. You can stay there, or at the farm.”

Clark shook his head. Since he had an apartment in the city, he only used the farm when he needed to get away from the hustle and bustle. It would need a bit of work to get it cleaned up and he wasn’t sure if Jo would enjoy staying at the farm for the weekend. They certainly weren’t ready for any kind of intimacy, since they’d only been dating two or three weeks.

“I might take you up on the offer of the bed at the mansion,” he said. “I’m not sure about Jo though.”

“Well, there are plenty of spare beds,” Lex offered. “Let me know.”

Clark nodded and turned to go to his own office. He focused on his paperwork, following up on a few things for his boss, until quitting time. Just as he was packing up for the day, a text message came through with a time and place for meeting with Oliver. As he put away his files, Lex came in.

“I’m heading over to the Ace of Clubs for a drink. Want to join me?”

“Thanks, but I’m beat. And my stomach’s still giving me hell,” he said.

Lex’s mouth quirked in a smirk. “Maybe next time you’ll take my warnings seriously and avoid that chilli. Especially when it’s from the local diner.”

“It’s not like I haven’t had chilli before.”

“Yeah, I know. I remember the chilli your dad used to make. Just about blew my head off.” Lex made a face.

“I never had any problems with it.”

“Of course not. You were a teenager back then.”

Clark frowned. “What are you suggesting?”

“It’s called getting old, Clark. The body can only take so much punishment once it reaches the age of thirty.”

Since Clark wasn’t quite that old yet, he chose to ignore that comment. “’Night Lex.”

He left the building and walked along the street toward the subway, as he normally would if he was heading home to his apartment. He merged with the crowd of commuters waiting for their respective trains but didn’t get on. Instead he made his way to the next street exit and sped away, blessing his quick reflexes that he was able to avoid people coming the other way.

He was confused when he realised the address Oliver had asked to meet him was a warehouse about half a mile from the river. The building itself was run-down and barely habitable.

He looked around at his surroundings, wondering why his friend had asked to meet at this place. The sound of something scraping on metal caught his attention and he whirled, realising the sound had come from behind.

“Relax,” Oliver said. “It’s just me.” He was dressed in green leather, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, a leather hood over his blond hair.

“Why are we here?”

His friend quickly explained that Chloe had not only managed to track the anonymous source, she had also talked him into giving her the location of the warehouse. He’d refused to tell her exactly how he’d got the information about the explosive device and had been unsurprisingly cagey. She had told Oliver she suspected it was the same guy working as a hacker for Phoenix, Inc.

“Chloe thinks we should get the guy to work for us,” Oliver said as he led the way inside.

“Yeah, well good luck getting him,” Clark replied. “So, you said earlier you suspected you knew who might have been behind the bomb.”

“I’ll know for sure once I see what’s behind door number one,” Oliver replied, pointing to a door which appeared to be barely standing. He reached out for the handle, only for it to come off in his hand. He turned to Clark. “You want to lend a hand here, Boy Scout?”

“You know I was never actually a boy scout, right?” Clark said, tapping the door with his finger, putting his super-strength behind the tap. The door fell with a crash.

He heard the sound of animals skittering away, startled by their sudden entry. He followed the blond man inside, looking around at the toys scattered around the room.

“What the …”

“Yeah, it’s as I thought. Toyman strikes again.”

“Toyman?”

“His name’s Winslow Schott. He was a genius, child prodigy, whatever. He used to work for Queen Industries but when he began bringing toys to work, turning them into bombs, well, we had to let him go. To say he was pissed off is an understatement. Rumour has it he’s working for Lex.”

Clark frowned. He knew Lex contracted a number of people to do ‘special jobs’ for him, but he had never heard of Schott. He guessed Lex had some secret files somewhere. Looked like he had to go digging.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Oliver told him when he apologised for not having known sooner. “We didn’t even know Schott was back in town. All we knew was what our mysterious source told us.”

Clark started to say something else but froze, his superhearing picking up the sound of someone muttering to themselves as they approached the building.

“Wait here a sec,” he said, speeding out. He watched as a portly man walked to the first door they’d used to enter the warehouse. As soon as the man saw the broken door, he uttered a startled sound and turned, walking away in haste as if a swarm of bees were after him. Clark quickly blocked his way and knocked him off his feet.

Oliver, having heard the commotion, came out and pulled Schott up before the other man had time to recover.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois plans dinner

She struggled with the heavy sack of groceries, trying to juggle that and get her keys out of her bag to open the door at the same time. She’d promised Clark she would cook him dinner and she had gone to the local grocery store to get a few things. He’d mentioned he loved lasagne and she’d decided to try making one. 

She hadn’t always been a good cook. Having lost her mother at six, she hadn’t been old enough to be able to cook meals and her father had relied on the army mess to provide their meals for them. The most he’d been able to cook himself was a steak on the grill, and even that had usually been almost as tough as leather. 

When she’d grown up, she’d become so absorbed in her career that she had never bothered learning to cook, using microwave dinners that she could buy ready-made at the grocery store. 

When she’d lived with Chloe, her cousin had often teased her for her lack of cooking ability. However, during her time away from Metropolis, she had lived with a gay guy who had loved to cook and taught her everything he knew about the culinary arts. She had found herself enjoying the process, getting a certain sense of satisfaction in creating a dish that was not only a lot healthier than a microwave meal but far more delicious. 

She opened the door to her apartment and entered, putting her groceries down on the island which separated the kitchen from the living area. She began emptying the sack, placing the items on the counter. She carefully pulled out a bottle of red wine and put it aside to open later. 

As she started preparing the meal, her phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

She couldn’t help the smile as she heard Clark’s voice.

“Hi. How’s your day?” He gave a long-suffering sigh.

“Same shit, different day,” he said. “We’re still on for dinner tonight, aren’t we?”

“Yes. You’re still coming by my place, right?”

“Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it. I could use some decent company after the day I’ve had.”

“You want to talk about it?” she asked, feeling sympathy for him. She knew Lex could be a tyrant to work for and Clark’s friendship with his boss probably made it worse, not better. 

“Maybe later. What time do you want me there?”

“If you’re here around six, that’ll give you about half an hour to relax before dinner,” she said. 

“Going to tell me what you have planned?”

“You’ll have to wait until you get here,” she told him, grinning as he chuckled on the other end. 

“Aww, not even a hint?”

She laughed. “You know better than that, Mr Kent.”

She ended the call, returning her attention to the dinner. She prepared the meat, sauce and the seasonings, putting it all in the pan to cook. The aroma of garlic and oregano filled the room, making her mouth water. Her friend had taught her the recipe, saying she could never go wrong with a good lasagne if she wanted to make a good impression. 

She found herself thinking about the things Clark had hinted at with his boss. She had managed to find some old press clippings from a few years ago. There had been one from the society pages of an exhibit opening at the Metropolis Museum, in the Luthor wing. Clark had been about fourteen then, if her calculations were correct. He had posed next to his friend but his expression had suggested he felt like a fish out of water. Lex had at least appeared relaxed, as if he was used to being photographed in such a setting. He looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. 

It hadn’t always been the case, from what she had discovered. Lex had developed a reputation for being a troublemaker in his youth. There had been snippets of gossip which painted a picture of him as a hard-drinking, hard-partying type who had once got into a fight in a nightclub known as Club Zero. He’d also spent a few nights in the emergency room at Metropolis General, being treated for alcohol poisoning. 

It seemed odd that this pair had developed such an unlikely friendship. They were from two completely disparate worlds. Clark, a shy farmboy and Lex, the cityboy. There had been an article in the Smallville Ledger saying that Clark had saved Lex from drowning but it was hardly a great basis for a friendship that had lasted fifteen years. 

As much as she wanted to ask Clark about that friendship, she knew he would get suspicious if she began asking too many questions. She figured that that kind of information would emerge naturally in the course of their relationship. 

There was only one problem. The more time she spent with him, the more she liked him. She hadn’t initially set out with any intention of liking him, but there was something about him that made her wish that there could be more. If only he wasn’t working for Lex, she thought. 

There had been the night they’d gone to the film festival. He’d escorted her to her door, like a gentleman. She had stood with her hand on the doorknob, wishing the night didn’t have to end. She had enjoyed the film but most of all she had enjoyed the fact that there had been no pressure on his part.

She had dated a guy when she was sixteen. He’d been a senior in high school and had been one of the popular kids in the high school. She had been thrilled when he’d asked her out, thinking that it would help her reputation among her classmates, who tended to shun the new transfers. The boy had taken her to the movies on their second date and wasted no time in doing the pretend yawn and stretch, putting his arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t exactly naïve, but she hadn’t expected him to make such a move on her on only their second date. 

Clark had made no such move. He’d been respectful, giving her space and letting her decide how far things went. It was frustrating. She didn’t think he was dense, but she had been sending him signals half the night and he hadn’t seemed to understand.

It wasn’t until she went to kiss him goodnight that it had changed. She had gently touched her lips to his in a soft kiss, only to find him pulling her closer and deepening the kiss. It felt like nothing she had ever felt before. Her body tingled in response to his nearness. She forgot about everything but him for those few moments so that when they parted she felt disoriented. She’d blinked up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just … I suddenly got this …”

“No, don’t,” she said, grabbing his arm as he made to walk away, obviously uncertain about her reaction. “I liked it,” she added with a little smile. 

His answering smile was brilliant, lighting up his face. 

Lost in her daydream, she didn’t realise the sauce was almost boiling over the pan until she heard the sizzle as some of it dropped on the hot cooktop. 

“Shit!” she muttered, moving quickly to turn down the heat and stir the contents of the pan. She returned to preparing the rest of her ingredients and finished making the lasagne, popping it into the oven. 

She glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was just after five, giving her an hour to shower, dress and have everything done for Clark to be here at six. She quickly washed the dishes and went to the bathroom to get ready.

Forty minutes later, she emerged from her bedroom dressed in white jeans and an angora sweater in a dusky pink. She didn’t really like the colour pink, thinking it didn’t suit her complexion at all, but would compromise with a darker pink rather than pastel colours. 

She switched on the oven to start cooking the lasagne, before turning back to the counter to slice up a baguette, spreading garlic butter on each slice. She wrapped the baguette in foil, ready to pop in the oven. She quickly made a salad and was struggling with opening the bottle of wine when her door buzzer went.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” Clark said. She pressed the button to release the door downstairs.

“Come on up,” she replied.

She abandoned the wine and went to the door to open it, glancing along the corridor. Clark was just coming up the stairs. He was holding a bouquet of a dozen pink roses, almost exactly the same shade as her sweater.

She grinned at him as he approached her.

“Those for me?” she asked. 

“Well, I was going to give them to my other girlfriend, but she wasn’t available.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, you’re funny!”

He laughed and gave her a quick kiss hello. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.”

She took his hand and led him into her apartment. Clark obviously saw the unopened wine on the counter as he immediately took over with the corkscrew while she put the flowers in a vase. 

“Something smells good,” he said. 

She didn’t comment as she arranged the roses. “These are beautiful,” she said. “And, look. They even match my sweater.”

Clark grinned as he poured them each a glass of wine. “You know, pink roses are supposed to symbolise grace and elegance. I thought they would suit you. Being that your name means ‘gracious’ in Hebrew. Isn’t that what you said?”

She stared at him, hardly daring to believe that he’d actually remembered what she’d said about the name Joanne. What she hadn't told him was that her mother had chosen it as a middle name for that meaning. 

“Well, you’re certainly earning your merit badge, Mr Kent.”

He handed her a glass. “Am I now?” He lifted his own glass and clinked it with hers. “Cheers.”

She lifted her glass to her lips and sipped the wine. It was not as dry as a white wine, with a slightly sweeter note than a merlot. She found herself gazing into his beautiful blue eyes.

It was as if they had the same thought at the same time. Clark took her glass and set it gently on the counter, setting his own down, before pulling her into his arms. He kissed her softly, almost as if he was gauging her reaction. She let him deepen the kiss, tasting the wine on his lips, feeling her own tingle at the light brush of his tongue. 

She had once dated a guy in high school who hadn’t known how to kiss. The first time he’d tried to kiss her, she had turned her head so his aim was off and he’d ended up slobbering like a dog over her ear. The second time, it was like he’d tried to eat her face. The worst part was, he was a smoker and it had been akin to kissing an ashtray. 

Kissing Clark was different. The man not only knew how to kiss, he also knew just the right way to do so to make her want more. 

Somehow they ended up sitting on her couch, arms around each other, still kissing hungrily. She slowly became aware of a ringing sound and realised the oven timer was going off to tell her to put the garlic bread in to warm. She pulled away abruptly, her face warming as she discovered Clark had managed to get one hand beneath the tank top under her sweater. 

“Sorry,” she said a little breathlessly. “I just have to put something in the oven.”

Clark looked disappointed as she got up from the couch and went back into the kitchen. She put the garlic bread in and took a few moments to let herself calm down by washing her hands under the faucet. 

She chewed on her lower lip, berating herself for getting carried away. As much as she wanted to lose herself in him, she couldn’t afford it.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dinner date continues

Clark was mentally exhausted. It had been a horrible day, all told. He had overheard Lex having a tantrum when his boss had learned the Toyman had failed in his mission to kill Oliver. He had been in a foul mood the entire day.

He had been worried that Schott had managed to contact Lex even though he was now in the custody of the Justice League, or rather, the government agency that had put together the League. Clark had no idea where they placed those who had been already taken into custody and were awaiting interrogation. He was aware there was an island upriver of the city, known as Stryker’s Island, which, like Alcatraz off San Francisco, housed maximum security prisoners.

He’d spent half the day wondering if the next time his boss stepped into his office, it would be to accuse him of betrayal. Yet Lex hadn’t uttered a word. The only thing he had done was remind Clark of the weekend in Smallville. Yet his whole demeanour suggested he was angry beyond words.

Clark had been looking forward to the dinner with Joanne. She had been modest about her cooking skills and she would probably wouldn’t be confident tackling the kinds of dishes his mother used to make on the farm. He wasn’t worried about her cooking. He enjoyed her company more.

He found he liked spending time with her. They could talk about anything, even argue good-naturedly about various things. When he and Chloe had been dating, most of their conversations had centred around time spent chasing stories for the Torch, the paper Chloe edited and distributed around Smallville High. He’d often wondered if that was such a good basis for a romantic relationship and he’d once talked to his mother about it.

_Martha had grown up in the city, the daughter of a lawyer. Her father hadn’t approved of her dating Jonathan Kent, thinking that she shouldn’t throw her future away over some farmer. She’d told Clark she never really wanted to be a lawyer and that had been her father’s dream._

_When she’d met Jonathan, they’d both been students at Metropolis University. She had considered it love at first sight, but despite that, the road to romance hadn’t been easy._

_“I suppose you could say it was opposites attract,” she’d told him. “Whenever your father and I got together, all he could talk about was crops and football.”_

_“Did you ever date anyone that Grandad might have liked?”_

_“Oh yes. I dated a lot of young men who were future lawyers or doctors, but to be honest, they all bored me to tears. All they could talk about was what was going on in our social circle.”_

_“But how did you know Dad was the one?” he asked._

_“Honestly, Clark, when you’re young, it’s never that simple.”_

_He didn’t really understand what she meant. Even when she explained that despite how they felt about each other, there were still so many hurdles they had to overcome. Her dad_ being _one of them. She told him that she’d actually broken up with his father for a while._

_“Then why did you get back together?”_

_“Because I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”_

That was the big difference, he thought as he watched Joanne bustle around the kitchen. From the moment they’d met, he had barely been able to keep his mind on work, thinking about her.

It hadn’t been that way with Chloe. They’d always been friends, but he’d often wondered if they’d only become a couple due to some sort of peer pressure.

Sure, he’d had feelings for his ex-girlfriend. The same as he had had feelings for Lana Lang. He still remembered when it had begun. The whole time his freshman year, he’d been hoping Lana would have taken notice and realised he’d had a crush on her, until he’d basically had a fight with Chloe during the Career Fair. Pete had told him Chloe had feelings for him but he hadn’t known he returned those feelings until he’d seen her talking to another boy.

He’d been hesitant to do anything for fear of losing his friendship with both girls. Lex had given him some good advice, for a change, telling him that unless he took a risk, he would never know for sure.

He could remember that all they’d talked about before graduating high school was how they would one day get married, but after graduation it was as if their lives had gone in completely different directions. Clark had slowly come to the realisation that he wasn’t as heartbroken about it as he should have been if he had been completely in love with Chloe.

Joanne finished whatever it was she was doing in the kitchen and came back to sit down beside him with her glass of wine.

“So, how was your day?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Oh, you know. Nothing too exciting, really. What about you? I got the impression on the phone that you didn’t have a good day.”

“No,” he said. “But it’s better now.”

She looked coyly at him, dropping her gaze. She sipped her wine without comment. Clark decided to bring up the subject of Lex’s ‘gathering’.

“So, uh, Lex is having a party this weekend at the mansion in Smallville. He wanted to know if you would like to come.”

“Will you be working?” she asked.

“No. He usually has his own security at the house.” He chewed his bottom lip, fighting a smirk.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

She poked his shoulder. “Tell me!”

He grinned at her. “Well, if you insist. See, I used to kid Lex about his lack of security at the mansion. I mean, he always seemed to be a magnet for every kind of trouble there was, especially the first couple of years after he moved there.”

Joanne tapped her finger on the glass. “You’d think he’d have better security.”

“Well, he has surveillance cameras, and there is supposed to be a guard on the gate.” He had no idea why he was telling her this, except to explain the joke. The first time he’d gone to the mansion, he’d jumped over the gate and managed to find his way inside without being stopped. As the years went by, even when they hadn’t been friends for a time, he’d still been able to walk in without being stopped by security. As had practically everyone else in Smallville.

“It sounds kind of crazy,” Jo observed. “I mean, a guy who has as much money as he does would need good security.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’ll understand if you don’t want to go.”

She looked at him. “No, it’s okay. I mean, he did invite me. Where would we stay? At the farm?”

“I was thinking we could use one of the guestrooms at the mansion,” Clark told her. He explained the farmhouse would need some TLC before he could even think about inviting her.

The truth was, he was hesitant about showing her that part of his life. They’d only been going out a few weeks and he figured letting her see that side of him was something that would happen eventually. Just not now.

She nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. So, does Lex hold these parties a lot?”

“Usually when he’s trying to woo a particular business owner,” he told her.

He’d done some checking and learned that Lex had invited someone from Gotham. The man had ties to the Maroni crime family, although on the surface his business looked completely legitimate. Clark wondered if his boss was thinking of joining forces with the Gotham mob. Either that or he was looking to expand his own territory and was trying to get the man on-side. It was a dangerous proposition. The crime families in Gotham were just as powerful as Lex.

The oven timer went off and Jo got up to serve their dinner.

“Need any help?” he asked. He noticed the table was already set for two, with placemats laid down for hot dishes.

“Could you get the salad?” she asked as she donned oven mitts to pull a dish out. He picked up the salad bowl and placed it on the table, watching as she brought out a square ceramic dish. From the aroma coming from the dish, he immediately knew what it was.

“Mmm, lasagne. My favourite.”

She put the dish down on one of the placemats and went back into the kitchen to take what he assumed was garlic bread from the oven. She placed the foil package on a plate and brought it out, sitting it next to the lasagne.

Clark grinned at her. “This looks great.”

“An old roommate taught me how to make lasagne,” she said. “Actually, he taught me a lot about cooking. I’m no Master Chef, but I get by.”

“’He’?” Clark asked, immediately catching that she’d lived with a guy.

She nodded. “This guy in England. Anthony. I met him through the magazine I was working for and he offered me a place to stay for a few months.” She paused and smirked at him. “Don’t worry. He’s gay.”

“I’m not jealous,” Clark replied, helping himself to the lasagne and some of the salad.

“Yeah, sure you’re not,” she returned, laughing at him. He mock-scowled at her and broke off a piece of the garlic bread, pretending to threaten her with it. “Oh, go ahead, Smallville,” she told him. “Like that will convince me you’re not jealous.”

He relented, using the piece of bread to mop up some of the sauce on his plate. He could immediately tell it was all made using fresh ingredients, rather than a packet sauce. It was delicious.

“Well, you’re right about one thing,” he said. “You’re no Master Chef, but I doubt they’d make a lasagne this good on any kind of reality show. Your friend taught you well.”

She smiled. “Thank you for the compliment.” She ate slowly, gazing at him thoughtfully. “Does your mother still live at the farm?”

He frowned at the change of subject, but shook his head. “No. She has a little place in New Troy. She moved there not long after I started working for Lex.”

She had been worried when he’d told her his real reason for taking the job with LexCorp. Mostly because she was concerned his boss might discover the truth about his abilities. She’d always worried about that. She’d once confessed she felt guilty because he’d never had a real birthday party growing up. She’d been afraid that he would somehow reveal his abilities to the wrong person.

He began regaling Jo with stories of growing up on the farm, including some funny incidents he could recall from his childhood until she was laughing. There had been one at the local fair where his mother had been selling her pies. A potential customer had complained the pies were too expensive, saying he paid less in Metropolis and the pies were probably better quality at the bakery.

_His mother had seen red. Being a redhead, she was known for her temper. Before his father could stop her, she had walked up to the man with one of her pies and taken a handful, throwing it in his face._

_“Now tell me that isn’t better tasting than any pie you can get mass-produced in a bakery,” she shouted at him. “How dare you insult my pies?”_

Jo was laughing as he told her the story.

“The kicker is, after he admitted that the pie did taste better than anything he could get at the bakery, Mom said: ‘Good. That’ll be five dollars.’”

“She actually charged him?” Jo asked, sounding incredulous. 

“And he paid it too. My mom’s not exactly tall, but you don’t mess with her when she’s angry. Whenever I did something wrong, she would just send me this look.”

“Oh, I know that look. It’s the ‘I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week’ look.”

“My dad, you know, he had a look too, but it was more, ‘I’m very disappointed’. I don’t know which was worse.”

“I can imagine what it must have been like if they both ganged up on you,” she said.

“Which they did. Frequently. No playing one off against the other,” he replied, laughing.

“Well, I bet you’d have plenty of good examples for when you have kids yourself.”

He nodded, sipping the last of his wine so he didn’t have to answer the last remark. He wasn’t sure if he could have children, since he wasn’t exactly human, but she didn’t know that.

They finished dinner in companionable silence. Jo had bought a cake at the local market and served it with ice cream for dessert.

After the dishes were done, they sat together on the couch, just talking. He wanted to kiss her and see where the mood took them, but wasn’t sure of her reaction. He’d had a feeling earlier that she had been a little unnerved by how intense things had become between them when she’d pulled away.

Maybe things were a little intense, he thought. He hadn’t expected to get so carried away when he’d been kissing her earlier, but he couldn’t help it. He was falling for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it was a running joke on the show that Lex had such bad security, so had a little fun with it.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark and Lois head to the mansion.

The Luthor mansion reminded her of a castle. She could even see what looked like some kind of turret as the truck approached the main gate. 

Clark had picked her up in a red F-150. While the truck looked almost pristine, she guessed that it was a few years old. Her companion had smiled and explained that Lex had given him the truck as a gift when they’d first met. He’d already told her that he’d saved his friend’s life when Lex had lost control of his Porsche and crashed through a barrier on Loeb Bridge. 

Clark’s parents had made him give the truck back, but the bald billionaire had kept it. Ostensibly out of some kind of sentimentality. He’d given it back to Clark on his first day working for LexCorp. 

“Don’t the people in Smallville think it’s weird that there’s a castle in the middle of the countryside? I mean, I’m expecting to see a moat or something. Where did Lex …?” She gestured with her hand. 

Clark smiled. “Yeah, I know. It’s a bit pretentious. Even Lex agreed with that when I first met him. I remember I said something about how great the place was and he said, ‘yeah, if you’re in the market for something to haunt’. Or something like that. Anyway, Lex’s dad bought it in Scotland. It was supposed to be the Luthor ancestral home but I don’t think that was ever proved.”

“I thought Lionel grew up in Suicide Slums?” she asked. “I saw the news articles when he was convicted for killing his parents.”

“Yeah, he did, but I think Lachlan, Lex’s grandfather, was born in Scotland. Anyway, when I was a kid, Lionel had the mansion shipped over and rebuilt here.”

She frowned, looking through the passenger side window at the grounds as Clark was waved on through the gate and drove down the long driveway. The estate was probably about two acres, give or take. She had to admit the gardens were beautiful, bordered by woods which gave the estate complete privacy. What appeared to be a man-made lake was on one part of the grounds.

“Did you ever spend time on that lake?” she asked.

“No. Well, maybe a couple of days here and there. After my dad died and Lex and I repaired our friendship.”

She frowned again at him. He’d mentioned a rift before but hadn’t explained what had caused it. She didn’t want to appear too nosy, but wondered why they’d stopped being friends for a while. 

“What happened between you two? When you stopped being friends.”

Clark shrugged. “I don’t know. Just things sort of came between us, I guess. Sometimes Lex can be kind of, I guess arrogant. And sometimes he doesn’t really think about how his actions can hurt someone.”

She caught a note in his voice and wondered if he’d experienced the same thing. She decided not to ask him about it, knowing if he wanted to share it, he would. It wasn’t relevant to what she was doing.

It had begun to bother her that she was involving him in this. He seemed to be a good guy, which was odd because he was working for a crook, and possibly a murderer. She just couldn’t reconcile the man she was beginning to have strong feelings for with the man she’d thought he was. How could Clark not know what Lex was doing? Or maybe he did know and he was just looking the other way. Then again, that didn’t match up with what she had seen with her own eyes. 

It was driving her crazy. One part of her told her that there was every possibility that Clark was acting but another part argued that he was just not that good an actor. He didn’t seem to be comfortable with lying. She had caught him out a couple of times with a lie, but wondered if it was not so much a lie as in an untruth but an omission. More than a few times she had had the strangest feeling that there was something he wanted to tell her, but was still keeping from her.

Then again, they’d only known each other a few weeks. It wasn’t possible for them to know everything about each other after just those few weeks of dating. 

Clark pulled up outside a huge garage and got out of the truck as a man in a formal uniform of black trousers and crisp white shirt approached. They spoke for a few seconds before Clark came around the other side and opened the door for her. She let him help her out of her seat, grabbing her purse.

“What about my overnight bag?” she asked.

“Miguel will get it,” he told her. “He’ll take it upstairs to the room.”

“Oh. Great.”

Clark took her hand and led her up the path to the main door which was already being held open by an older man in a similar uniform.

“Raines, this is Joanne.”

“Very good, sir. Mr Luthor is in the study.”

“Great. Thanks.”

She walked quickly to keep up with Clark, her heels clicking on the parquet floor. The spike heels were only about two and a half inches, but her partner had long strides and it was difficult keeping up with him without worrying about twisting her ankle. 

He led the way along a hallway. She noted the walls were wood panels. Some artworks were mounted on the panels at various intervals and were clearly original works. No such thing as prints, she thought. 

Clark stopped at a set of double doors and thrust them inward, entering the room. She saw to her surprise a small boy standing beside a glass desk.

“But I want to …”

“Alexander, how many times do I have to tell you, you are not staying for the party. You are to stay in the nursery and that is final!”

She narrowed her eyes at the bald man scolding the child. The little boy had dark red hair and a slightly chubby face. He was wearing what appeared to be the uniform of a prep school in Metropolis. The same prep school she had learned Lex had attended. 

“Lex,” Clark said. “I didn’t know Alex was going to be here this weekend.”

Lex looked up. “Yeah. The school informed me yesterday that the children had to be sent home so they could treat the entire campus for termites.” He scowled to express his displeasure. She quickly saw the little boy’s face crinkle up as if he was going to cry. Poor kid, she thought. He probably wanted to spend time with his dad and Lex wasn’t having it.

The bald man smiled and approached them, turning his back on the boy.

“So, Joanne, isn’t it?” He held out his hand. 

“We met at Atlantis a few weeks ago,” she said, taking his hand in a firm grip, fighting the urge to pull away and wipe her hand against her skirt.

“So we did.” He looked at Clark. “Well, your taste in women is certainly improving.”

What was that supposed to mean, she thought, suppressing her anger. As he went on, it was clear he was subtly insulting her cousin. Maybe she and Chloe hadn’t been that close in a very long time, but she didn’t think her cousin deserved to be insulted. 

“What do they say? Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy?” Lex was laughing. “Then again, considering who she’s been seen with, I’d say they’re welcome to each other! Don’t you, Clark?”

She glanced at her companion and realised he too was just barely suppressing anger. Did he still have feelings for Chloe?

“Forgive me, Lex, but you are talking about my ex-girlfriend. No matter how bad things got between us, I don’t think she deserved that.”

The bald man narrowed his eyes, clearly not impressed that Clark was talking back to him in such a way, even though the brunet’s words were reasonable and even polite. 

“You’re right, of course. I apologise. Why don’t you show Joanne around the grounds? I’m sure she’s curious about this place.”

Clark nodded and turned back to her with a smile. “Would you like a tour?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said with a nod. 

They strolled out to the gardens. “What was that all about?” she asked. “I got the feeling you were upset about what he said about … your ex.” She had just barely managed to stop herself from saying her cousin’s name. 

“He and Chloe didn’t really get along. She never really liked him. Truth is, they both had a lot in common. In the beginning, anyway.”

“In what way?”

“Well, Chloe was the editor of our high school paper. She always had this nose for things. Lex is sort of the same. He’s never liked mysteries. He tends to take things apart, analyse them right down to their tiniest molecule, until he’s satisfied he knows everything there is to know. He gets mad when he doesn’t get answers.”

“Did Chloe?” she asked.

Clark studied her for a moment. “Yes and no. We had our arguments over stuff like that. She would get herself in trouble and I would have to help her get out of it and we’d often fight about it but make up the next day. We cared about each other too much not to make up.”

She nodded, sensing a deep loyalty to Chloe. He obviously didn’t want to say anything bad about her cousin, which she liked, but wondered if he still had romantic feelings for her.

“Do you still love her?” She hated asking that question, especially since it caused an odd feeling in her stomach. Almost as if she was jealous that Clark held such deep feelings for another woman. Never mind that that woman was her cousin.

“Yeah, I do. But not in the romantic sense. We both realised a long time ago that we’d be better off friends.”

She bit her lip. “I see.”

He looked at her, placing a hand on her knee. “I don’t think you do,” he said. “Maybe it seems weird to still care about her, but I do. But, it’s as I said. Not as a couple. Not the way I … I care about you.”

She gazed at him searchingly, wondering if he was actually telling the truth. He gazed back at her, never wavering. She licked suddenly dry lips, mentally begging him to kiss her. He leaned toward her, their mouths connecting in a gentle kiss that slowly became more heated. She wrapped her arms around him as she opened up to him, losing herself in his kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was no Veritas Society and no retcon with the mansion. Lionel never set foot in it until Lex moved to Smallville.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark observes his date.

Clark had been furious at Lex’s insinuations about Chloe but hadn’t wanted to spoil things with Jo and had tamped down on his anger. He knew as they talked that she had sensed he was upset but appeared to have misinterpreted his feelings. He hadn’t lied to her about how he felt about his ex-girlfriend but he guessed she probably felt a little jealous.

He walked with her through the grounds, showing her various spots of interest. Lex had had different sculptures installed in the gardens, which was typical of his own pretentiousness. As much as he’d tried to make out in the beginning that he hated the mansion, he had done a good job of showing off himself.

Lex had somehow managed to get a sculpture of Alexander the Great. Jo frowned at it.

“It’s Alexander the Great,” Clark told her. “He’s pretty much Lex’s idol.”

She looked at him, cocking an eyebrow. He saw her lips quirk in a half-grin.

“Really?”

“He used to tell me he was named after the king. I could see that, actually. Lionel was always a bit of a snob.”

“Hence the castle,” she pointed out.

“Oh, true. Anyway, Lex was forever telling me stories about the great kings of the past and using them as allegories, trying to relate them to whatever teenage angst I was going through at the time.” He rolled his eyes.

He might have been an alien, but since he was raised human, around other humans, he was subject to the same sort of teenage issues his friends were. He often looked back at those years and wondered why he’d acted so stupid sometimes, but guessed it had everything to do with his age and his influences. Even Chloe had often called him on his whining, telling him he needed to shut up and get with the program.

“I was such a dork as a teenager. I was taller than most of the kids in my freshman class and I guess I tripped over my own feet a lot.”

Jo looked down at his feet and laughed. “Well, they are big feet.”

“Oh yeah, go ahead. Make fun of the dork. I’m sure you never had any dorky moments.”

“Are you kidding? When I was thirteen, I had to wear braces for a year and then a retainer for two years. Imagine getting your first boyfriend at fourteen and him not wanting to kiss you because your mouth is full of metal!”

“I can still beat that. I used to have a crush on this girl and every time I got within five feet of her I’d trip up and fall flat on my face.”

“You think that’s embarrassing? Imagine getting your period for the first time at twelve and your teacher won’t even let you out of class so you can go see the school nurse! Then having to face your dad and getting this really awkward birds and the bees speech. Of course, then I had to give my sister the same speech and all I could tell her was, don’t kiss a boy or you’re gonna get pregnant.”

“You know it takes a lot more than that,” he replied with a smirk.

“I was twelve. What the hell did I know about sex education? My mom wasn’t around so I was it.”

“It must have been hard,” he said sympathetically.

She shrugged. “We made the best of it.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” he prompted.

“We had some problems a few years ago and we don’t talk much. I guess it’s because after my mom died I had to become like big sister and mom at the same time. Our dad wasn’t around much.”

“Why not?” he asked, remembering she had mentioned her mother passing away when she was young.

“Because of his job. I guess when Mom died he buried himself in his work.” She looked at him. “What was it like for you when your dad died?”

“Well, I wasn’t a kid then, so maybe that made it easier. There was just my mom and me.”

“You don’t have any siblings?”

He shook his head. His mother had been told she would never be able to have children but a few years ago something had happened which had allowed her to get pregnant. They’d been convinced it was something to do with his lifepod. She’d been almost five months along when a program within the ship had activated, telling him he had to leave Smallville. He had blown up the ship, using Kryptonite, but the resulting concussion from the explosion had caused his parents’ truck to overturn and his mother had lost the baby. Clark had never really forgiven himself for that.

By the time he’d shown her up to the room they’d be sharing, other guests had started to arrive. Jo stood by the bed, looking around. The room wasn’t the nicest in the mansion. Lex usually reserved those for whichever business owner he was trying to ‘seduce’. Still, it was nice enough with a queen size bed and a small adjoining bathroom. The only artwork adorning the walls was a large painting by an artist Clark had never heard of, although he was hardly an expert in art anyway.

“What about my bag?” she asked.

He went to the closet. Unlike the bigger guest rooms, this room had a fairly small, one-door closet, but it was adequate for their needs. He opened the door and showed her their clothes had already been put away.

“Wow. Efficient,” she said.

“Yeah, the staff are very efficient. Lex kind of runs this place like a tyrant.”

She looked at him as if she was trying to figure out what he had meant by that. The servants in the mansion had never been paid very much from the beginning. Barely above minimum wage. The exception had been Mrs Palmer, the housekeeper who had looked after the mansion when Lex had first moved to Smallville. She had been working for the Luthors for many years.

After her son had attacked Lex, Mrs Palmer had been sent back to Metropolis. Clark had heard she had been fired by Lionel but Lex, still wanting to do the right thing in those days, had secured her a well-paying post elsewhere.

Since then, he’d had a slew of different people working for him. He didn’t trust his servants and made sure they understood that any problems would result in immediate dismissal. He didn’t care what they were. Most of the servants were now contracted by an agency and only worked at the mansion when Lex was in Smallville, which was usually once a month, if that. He did have a caretaker whose full-time job it was to keep the grounds maintained and the mansion clean at all times.

He’d used another agency until a few months ago. One of the maids contracted to work one weekend had been having problems with an ex-boyfriend who used to beat her. The ex had come to the mansion, despite her having a restraining order, and threatened to kill her and anyone else she talked to. Instead of showing sympathy for her plight, Lex had fired her on the spot and cancelled the contract with the agency. Clark had tracked her down and got Bruce to help her start a new life away from the abusive ex. He had later been arrested on assault charges.

They went downstairs to join the party. Jo appeared animated and friendly with most of the guests. Yet every time she talked to Lex it was as if someone had turned off a light switch. She was cool in all her exchanges with him, even as the bald man tried to flirt with her. It was clear she wasn’t having it.

Clark circulated the party, watching as Lex approached the man from Gotham. He listened into the conversation, realising that his earlier thoughts were right. His boss was trying to convince the man to do business with LexCorp, giving Lex a foothold in the city. Sal Moroni was not going to like that at all.

It was late by the time some of the guests left and they went to bed. Jo came out of the bathroom wearing a dark blue nightgown. It was fairly modest, although the gown ended mid-thigh, exposing long, tanned legs. She smoothed the satin, looking a little uncertain.

“Too much?” she asked.

He shook his head. He’d already changed into his own nightwear. From the look on her face, she seemed to be relieved he had opted for the safety of pyjama pants and a t-shirt. While they had agreed to sleep in the same bed, they hadn’t planned anything more intimate than that.

The maid had already been in to turn down the bed. Clark hesitantly indicated the right side of the bed.

“Uh, I wasn’t sure which side you like sleeping on, so …”

“I’m easy,” she replied, then bit her lip. “I mean, I don’t mind.”

He knew what she’d meant, but it was a relief to know she was feeling just as nervous as he was. He got in one side while she moved around the bed and got in the other, pulling up the blankets. She turned on her side to face him.

“Well, goodnight,” she said.

He leaned forward to place a soft kiss on her lips. “Goodnight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she quipped. He snickered, reaching over to turn off the bedside lamp.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when something woke him. Frowning, he felt the bed beside him. Jo wasn’t there. He looked around but the bathroom light wasn’t on. Wondering where she had gone, he tuned in his super-hearing. A slight creak of a floorboard told him she was creeping downstairs.

He decided to follow her, still using his super-hearing. Jo was wandering around downstairs but he couldn’t tell what she was doing exactly.

_“Can I help you, ma’am?”_

_“Oh. I’m sorry. I was looking for the kitchen. I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d heat up some milk.”_

_“It’s right this way, miss.”_

Clark continued to listen as she chattered to the maid while heating up the milk in the microwave.

_“So, Clark said you actually work for an agency?”_

_“Yes, miss. The agency contracts us to work at the mansion whenever Mr Luthor is in town.”_

_“Which one? I have a friend who is looking for some staff. She didn’t want to hire anyone permanent.”_

_“It’s called Metropolis Maid Services, miss. They have a Facebook page.”_

_“Oh, that’s great. Thank you.”_

_“You’re welcome. Sleep well, ma’am.”_

Clark frowned. While it sounded completely innocent, he just had a gut feeling there was more to what she was asking than she was saying. From what she had told him, he didn’t think she had any friends who would require a maid service. It seemed odd.

He listened again but there was no further conversation. He heard the sound of her coming back up the stairs and went back to bed.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois is followed

She walked quickly along the street, not even acknowledging the stares of people she passed; a woman on a mission. It was late in the afternoon and the temperature was dropping but there were still a lot of people out shopping in the main street. 

She made her way to the intersection and stood among the crowd of people waiting for the light to change. Most of them ignored her but she had an uneasy feeling. Almost as if she was being watched. She tried to appear nonchalant as she looked around but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. 

The light changed and she mixed with the others, crossing the street. Again she felt that odd sensation of being watched but didn’t look around, continuing on, dodging this way and that to get out of the path of other pedestrians. 

She walked the length of the next block and crossed the next intersection before turning down that street and walking another half-block. She stopped beside a building with two huge stone columns. It was at least one hundred years old, or maybe a little more. Roughly turn-of-the-century, she thought. Unlike the others surrounding it, there was no such thing as modern conveniences. The local heritage group had fought to preserve the building as it was, even though it didn’t meet city ordinance requirements, like being wheelchair accessible. It had at least had an elevator, although even that was ancient and prone to breaking down. 

The building housed various offices. Most of them were tiny and cramped and not exactly highly sought after, despite the inexpensive rents. 

She ascended the small flight of steps to the lobby and went through a door to the stairwell, ignoring the elevator, and went up one flight of stairs. She paused at the slight squeak of the hinge from the main door below, frowning. She wasn’t being paranoid. Someone was following her. 

She quickly climbed the stairs to the third floor and entered through the door, hearing a slight bang as the door shut, walking quickly down the dimly-lit corridor and ducking into an alcove. She waited calmly, deliberately keeping her breathing quiet and even so she could listen for any sounds. Sure enough, less than a minute after she’d entered, the door opened again. She heard steps along the old linoleum floor and slight creaks of loose boards taking weight. 

The visitor drew level with the alcove and she held her breath. There was just enough light for her to see that the person who had been following her was a man. He was probably in his 50s with close-cropped silver hair and a wizened face. He walked with an upright bearing, like a military man. While not skinny in build, it was clear he kept his body in tip-top shape. 

He hesitated for just a second before continuing on down the corridor. 

She moved in for the attack, her movements swift and forceful. The man turned, clearly having heard her, raising his arms to block off the attack. She found herself punching air before he grabbed her fist and forced her back against the wall. 

“Nice try,” he said. “But you’re still telegraphing your moves.”

“Screw you,” she said. “I made you all the way over on seventh.”

He shook his head and tsked. “I’ve been following you since you left the El train on Baltimore. How you’ve managed to stay ahead of the game this long, I don’t know.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know, Flag, it’s no wonder you’re reduced to contract work. You have such a sparkling personality!”

He smirked. “All part of my charm.” He looked up, past her shoulder. “Emil.”

“All clear, boss.”

Rick Flag gestured toward an office at the end of the corridor. She followed him, taking out a set of keys before opening the door. 

“Age before beauty,” she quipped. 

Flag said nothing, entering the office ahead of her. She stepped inside. Flag’s off-sider, Emil LaSalle, followed her. 

She had met Flag when she had been investigating a story about a government organisation framing a group of so-called vigilantes from about thirty years earlier. One of her sources in the military had told her the organisation, called Checkmate, had a team which it used for various covert operations, most of them fairly dangerous. Hence it was called the Suicide Squad. Most of the members had been imprisoned for the odd crime. Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot, hired himself out as an assassin. 

Flag had served with the US Army for close on thirty years but after an incident in Afghanistan when he’d fired on civilians, against orders, he’d been court-martialed and dishonourably discharged. 

She remembered her father saying something about the incident, grumbling about soldiers taking matters into their own hands. When she had met Flag and asked him about it, he’d told her that as far as he was concerned, no one had been innocent. He’d claimed the whole thing had been a whitewash and the army had refused to believe that the civilians were in fact suicide bombers, despite there being no proof either way. 

After his discharge, the assistant director of Checkmate, Amanda Waller, had approached him, offering him a chance to lead the Suicide Squad. 

Waller had since been fired from her position after another agency had exposed her plot to draw the old Justice Society out of hiding by sending a member of the Suicide Squad to murder its former members. Flag had no idea who was behind the other agency but had distanced himself from the whole thing. 

She had approached Flag to help her with her own mission to expose Luthor after she’d learned that one of the team had been captured by LexCorp and kept in one of the research labs for study. As far as the leader knew, Bette Sans Souci was still a prisoner. 

She looked at him. He stood facing her with his arms crossed over his chest. While she had already known a little martial arts, having learned some of it as a child, Flag had taught her how to fight dirty. He’d spent hours with her lecturing her about the enemy and how they would never observe the rules of combat. 

“Well?” she asked. 

“Well, what?” he replied. 

She rolled her eyes again. “You’re a dick, Flag.” 

“Thank you. I try.” He smirked. “So, how’s the boyfriend?”

“That’s none of your business!” she snapped. The last thing she wanted to do was discuss Clark with the likes of Rick Flag. 

“You know, he ain’t what he seems.”

She glared at the older man. Just because he worked for her, it didn’t give him the right to lecture her or tell her what to do. Or how to feel about Clark. Sure, she had moments where she wondered if she should just back off and find another way to expose Luthor, but had dismissed those feelings, telling herself that Clark was still working for Lex and that justified what she was doing. 

Never mind the fact that it felt like she was almost prostituting herself by dating him. Or that she was beginning to have feelings for him.

Yet at times she thought that Clark wasn’t telling her everything. It was obvious that he and Lex were no longer friends but that appeared to have less to do with the fact that Lex was his boss and more to do with the fact that the man she had been dating really didn’t like the bald billionaire and trusted him even less. 

She had watched him the whole weekend at Luthor’s mansion and he’d seemed more than a little distracted. Almost as if he was worried about something. 

“What would you know?”

Flag nodded toward Emil. “Ask him. He’s been following your boyfriend.”

She frowned as she turned to look at Emil. She didn’t ask questions about the people Flag chose to use for the jobs she asked him to do but he’d told her LaSalle was a teleporter. How he’d got those powers she didn’t know. 

She had no idea how being a teleporter helped him follow someone like Clark. 

“The guy seems to just disappear,” Emil said. “It’s like one second he’s there, the next he’s vanished.”

“He’s a teleporter?” she asked. 

The man shook his head. “I don’t know what he is, but I’m gonna find out.”

“Leave him alone! I don’t pay you to follow my boyfriend.”

“So you admit it,” Flag said, sounding amused. 

“I said leave it alone,” she snapped. “Now what else do you have for me?”

“I asked around about your little ‘mission’. There’s a woman who operates out of Gotham, but she figures she’ll help you with this one job. Pretty simple uplift. You sure you want to do this?”

She nodded. After talking with the maid, she had contacted the agency, claiming she was with the accounting department at LexCorp saying she just needed to confirm some records. The maid service had been none the wiser and told her they had a permanent contract cleaning the offices at LexCorp as well as the occasional job at the mansion. 

Knowing she needed to get into Lex’s private files, she had decided to disguise herself as one of the cleaning crew. The trouble was, she also needed an access card to get into secured offices in the building and the only way to get that was to uplift it from a worker. Since she wasn’t exactly a pickpocket, she needed someone who was and had asked Flag to find one. 

“Give me her number,” she said. 

Flag handed over a business card. The card was white with a picture of a black cat. Clever, she thought, reading the name. Catwoman. She was obviously considered being a cat-burglar a profession. 

“Nice!” she said. 

“Thought you’d like it.”

Flag started to leave the office, Emil following behind him. The older man paused in the doorway. 

“Take my advice, cutie. Always mind your surroundings. You never know what might be coming at you.”

“Well, thanks for that pearl of wisdom, Chief. I can take care of myself.”

Flag raised his hand in the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot her. She glared at him. As much as she needed what he and his team could do, she heartily disliked him. The man was a creep and an asshole. 

She sat down at the desk with a heavy sigh. The sooner all this was over, the better. 

She just wished she could work something out so Clark didn’t have to get hurt. 

She unlocked the desk drawer and pulled out a laptop, switching it on. Once it had booted up, she opened up her files and began reading through some of the documents she had. Eventually, everything on the files would be sent to the authorities. She would first have to make sure she had covered her ass. The last thing she wanted was for it all to come crashing down and the authorities arrest her. Then again, she hoped they would overlook a little breaking and entering in favour of the much bigger fish she was dangling on a hook.

Her phone beeped and she glanced at it. Stuart had sent her a text asking if it was safe to talk. She dialled his number.

“What’s up?”

“What’s up is I’m in deep shit! I’m sure they found me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t exactly know who they are!” he responded, sounding almost exasperated. “It’s the same people who have been trying to track me for weeks. What do you want me to do?”

“Get the hell out of Dodge!”

“What about Luthor’s files?”

“I’ve got another angle I’m chasing. I figured I’d need a back-up plan.”

“So, I’m out?”

“I told you when things started getting dodgy that this might happen. I don’t know why you’re getting so pissed with me. You knew the score when we started this, Stuart.”

“You’re a bitch, you know that? You’re just going to leave me to hang high and dry?”

“I just told you to get out, Stuart! I don’t know what else you expect me to do!”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing!” he snarled, ending the call.

She sat back, huffing. “I’m not a bitch,” she said.

The insult rankled. When she had first met with Stuart, she had thought she had made it quite clear that if he got caught, he was on his own. He’d been so confident that there was no way he could be tracked but clearly someone else out there was just better than him. 

She thought he understood exactly what she was doing. Not to mention all the money she’d paid him to use his expertise. She’d gone to great lengths to make sure he had a contingency plan should the worst happen. 

She just hoped he managed to get out before they found him.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark is concerned about Jo but there are other pressing matters

Clark had been mulling over everything he’d seen and heard that weekend. He’d already reported everything he’d heard during Lex’s conversation with the man from Gotham to Bruce, but he hadn’t said anything to his colleagues about his concerns about Jo. 

He’d spent a lot of time analysing every conversation they’d ever had and still hadn’t come to any conclusion about her. Meanwhile, they’d been together almost every night. Despite his misgivings, he still enjoyed spending time with her and thought she felt the same thing. 

He had decided there was only one person who he could talk to about this, but Chloe was busy with other things. He realised it was a matter that would have to wait until his friend was not so busy. 

He was surprised to get a call from Oliver on the Friday, just as he was about to leave work for the weekend. Jo had told him she couldn’t have dinner with him that night as she had to meet with a client, but was happy to spend the day with him on Saturday. He had decided to take her horse-riding at the farm. She’d confessed she hadn’t been on a horse in years and was well out of practice but he knew Ben Hubbard, who was lending him the horses for the day, wouldn’t provide a horse that was too spirited. 

“What’s up?” he asked, wondering why his friend was calling on his cellphone. He figured it must be urgent if Oliver was taking such a chance. They always used a scrambler in their communications so the calls couldn’t be tracked, but there was still a good chance Lex had had people bug the phone itself. 

“Can you meet me? Ten minutes?”

“Sure.”

Oliver gave him the GPS co-ordinates. Clark looked them up on his phone and memorised the location, which looked like a warehouse on Bessolo Boulevard. 

When he got there, he realised the warehouse was one of many that had been converted into apartments. All part of the mayor’s ‘urban renewal’ plan, he thought. 

He entered the building and looked around.

“Here!” Oliver stepped out of the shadows and pointed to a large door which would slide on a track. Clark guessed it had been converted from either an office or storage area. 

“What are we doing here?” he asked in a low voice.

“Remember that guy Chloe was tracking?” Oliver replied in an equally low voice. Clark nodded. “Yeah.”

Clark reached for the door and realised it was locked. He pulled hard to break the lock and slid the door aside. Just in time to see a man trying to flee through a window. Oliver looked at him.

“Go!” he said. 

Without hesitation, Clark ran at super speed, quickly tracking the man and cutting him off. The man tried running in another direction but Oliver was already there, aiming an arrow. 

“Stop, or I will shoot.”

Clark studied the man as he hesitated, obviously trying to decide his best course of action. He looked young, with dark hair. He recognised him from Chloe’s files. Stuart Campbell. 

Stuart looked as if he was going to try to run anyway. Clark shook his head.

“I wouldn’t do it. He’s a good shot.”

The dark-haired man looked at him. “Hey, aren’t you … Don’t you work for Lex?”

“What do you know about it?”

Stuart immediately shut his mouth, clearly realising he’d said the wrong thing. He fidgeted, looking nervous. Clark wondered if the other man thought Lex had sent him. 

Oliver sent him a meaningful look. Clark nodded and approached Stuart, taking his arm. 

“Hope you don’t get motion sickness,” he said. Stuart stared at him, wide-eyed. 

“Uh, what?” he asked, alarmed. 

Clark wasted no time, gripping the man firmly before taking off at super-speed. The League had rooms on a floor two levels below Watchtower where they would take people like Stuart. Those they didn’t exactly classify as suspects and were clearly not dangerous, but were still a concern. 

A redhead greeted him as he arrived.

“Put him in room two,” she said. It was designed to be an interrogation room with a one-way mirror. The room adjoining it had the other side of the mirror as well as recording equipment. 

He did as ordered and left Stuart in the room, following the woman out. She entered the adjoining room and began setting up the recording. 

He studied her. Tess Mercer was Lex’s half-sister. When Clark had first met her, he had thought she was just as ruthless and manipulative as her brother but as he’d got to know her he’d realised that she was just as much a victim as anyone. They’d tried dating but had decided to remain good friends.

Tess’ mother Pamela had been Lillian Luthor’s nurse before she’d had an affair with Lionel. Her mother’s refusal to abort Tess when she’d become pregnant had led to a demotion to a position as the-then one-year-old Lex’s nanny. Lillian had probably suspected the affair but had never confronted Pamela. 

When Tess was five, Pamela had gone with Lillian and Lex to the family’s ranch in Montana. She had wanted to take her daughter with her but Lionel had paid a doctor to say that Tess was severely allergic to animals and would not be able to tolerate a few days on the ranch. By the time they returned two weeks later, Lionel had taken his daughter to an orphanage and left her there.

Of course, Tess remembered none of that, but she had learned the truth from a package Pamela had left in a safety deposit box. Lex, having also discovered the secret after Pamela had died from cancer, had taken the contents of the box himself and hidden them. Why he had never actually destroyed them was something neither Clark nor Tess would ever know but they both figured Lex had been on some kind of power trip. 

A couple of months after Lionel had dumped her, he returned, telling the woman who ran the orphanage that he had found a couple who would adopt her. The couple were abusive, both physically and emotionally. Clark suspected Tess’ adoptive father was also sexually abusive as well, but Tess had never said a word. 

Lex had hired Tess and began grooming her for a senior executive position within LexCorp, without telling her the truth about her parentage. It was only a chance discovery that had led her to the truth and she’d confided in Clark. He had contacted his friends in the League who had offered her a way to escape her half-brother’s manipulations. 

“How’re you doing, Tess?” Clark asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, smiling at him, able to relax a little. “So, this guy’s been hacking into Lex’s systems?”

“Yeah, we think so.”

The door to the interrogation room opened and J’onn J’onzz walked in. He was a tall man with the appearance of an African American, with dark skin and wiry black hair. Clark grinned at Tess. J’onn, also known as the Martian Manhunter, had once worked for his birth father, Jor-El, on Krypton. He’d taken on the role of enforcer after his own people on Mars had been wiped out due to years of civil war. Plus, he was a telepath. Whatever Stuart was up to, there was no way he would be able to lie. 

Stuart smirked as J’onn dropped a thick file on the table.

“I get what this is,” he said, sounding amused. “This is like an interrogation, right? I’ve seen this movie. Are you cops?”

“I’ll ask the questions!” J’onn told him coolly, not giving anything away. The one thing Clark had always liked about the Martian was his ability to show little emotion, even under difficult circumstances. It made him the perfect interrogator. Most of those he questioned became unnerved at their own inability to rattle him. 

“Yeah, you’re cops, aren’t you? And I know my rights. You didn’t read me my rights when you brought me here. Which means your arrest won’t stick.”

“You’re not under arrest,” J’onn replied. 

With another smirk, Stuart got up. “Well, if I’m not under arrest, I’ll be leaving then.”

“Sit. Down.”

The younger man looked at the Martian as if trying to gauge what he could get away with. Clark glanced at Tess before looking back into the interrogation room. The older man’s human visage slipped for barely a second. Enough so that Clark could detect it, but not enough for anyone human to do so. Yet Stuart shrank back in fear. He sank down on the chair, all bravado having vanished. Clark figured J’onn had let his appearance change just enough to send a clear message.

“What … ah, what do you want?” the computer hacker asked.

J’onn opened the file. “Tell me about Phoenix Inc.”

“I don’t … I mean, it’s, uh, a dummy corporation.”

“Yes, we’re aware of that. What is its purpose?”

“Um, it was just a way to hide money.”

J’onn nodded. “In the past three or so years, Phoenix Inc has stolen approximately five million dollars from LexCorp accounts. What is that money being used for?”

Stuart looked worried. He scratched at his jaw, clearly trying to figure out what to say. 

“I can’t tell you. She’ll kill me. Okay, she won’t exactly kill me, but she’ll be very upset.”

“She who?”

“I can’t. I … if he finds her, he’ll kill her.”

Clark looked uneasily at Tess. Who was the woman and why was Stuart so concerned for her welfare? Who was the ‘he’ Stuart had mentioned. Was it Lex?

J’onn clearly had the same idea. “Who is this man you referred to?”

Stuart shook his head and sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “You don’t understand. I can’t!”

“We cannot help you if you will not help us.”

“I don’t need your help. I want to get out of here.”

“I am afraid, Mr Campbell, that that is not possible. You are now in the custody of the Justice League.”

“The what?” Stuart looked confused. “You’re not … cops? And you’re not working for Lex, either, are you? That guy, whatsisname. The one who brought me here. If he’s working for you, then how … Who is he?”

“That is not your concern.” J’onn turned to look in the mirror. “Tess?”

Tess turned and went out, opening the door to the interrogation room. J’onn instructed Stuart to follow her. Clark knew there was an apartment in the building which was used to place witnesses until they could be transferred out of the city. 

As far as anyone who might be looking for the witness was concerned, they would have vanished without trace. 

J’onn entered the room and pressed a few keys on the keyboard, storing the recording. He turned to smile at Clark. 

“Hello, Kal-El.”

“J’onn. So, I’m guessing you read his mind.”

“A little,” he admitted. “The young man seemed very concerned for the woman he is working with. I do not believe their intentions are … nefarious.”

Hence the order to place Stuart in protective custody, Clark thought. He had wondered when he’d first discovered the theft whether those stealing the money had done it out of greed or something else. It was good to know, just from J’onn’s assessment of that brief conversation, that he didn’t think it was greed. 

The question was, what were they trying to achieve? Stuart had clearly been afraid. 

Of course, the other question was, who was he working with? 

When Tess returned, they held a debriefing in the main room of Watchtower with Chloe, Bruce and Oliver. J’onn quickly explained what he’d learned from Stuart. 

“I think we need to find this woman,” Clark said. “If Lex tracks her down …”

“He won’t,” Oliver assured him. “At least, not through Campbell. I went through his apartment and found his phone.”

“So you’ll be able to trace her?” Clark asked.

“That depends on whether she has her tracking system on,” Chloe interjected, explaining that using GPS to home in on her location would only work if the system was activated. If the woman was smart, she would have deactivated it. It wasn’t exactly as easy as it was portrayed on procedural cop shows.

Clark sighed. That wasn’t very reassuring. Whatever her reasons for getting Campbell to hack into Lex’s systems, she was playing a very dangerous game and it was up to him to save her. Even from herself.


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois has a meeting

Catwoman had informed her they were to meet on a ferry which crossed the river between Gotham and Metropolis. The cat-burglar didn’t want to take any chances of them both being recognised, although she wondered how that was possible since the people she had once been closest to probably thought she was dead. 

She got onboard the ferry, wearing dark glasses and a white silk scarf over her head. Another instruction from the woman she was to meet. She stood on the deck, the wind blowing just enough to make her occasionally put a hand on her head to stop the scarf being blown off. 

As she stood against the rail pretending to look out over the scenery, someone came to stand beside her, with a gap of maybe six inches between them. She could tell it was a woman as she caught a whiff of expensive perfume. 

The woman began to speak in a low voice. 

“Sure is pretty out here.”

“It’s prettier over the other side,” she responded.

The woman turned her head and smiled. She had pretty features and dark, wavy hair which framed an oval face. 

“So, how you want to play this, Kansas?”

“All I need is an access card which will get me into LexCorp Tower.”

“It’s gonna cost you.”

“How much?” she asked coolly.

“A hundred K.”

“Done.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “What? No quibble?”

“Are you thinking you should have asked for more?” she replied with a smirk. The woman’s expression was neutral but she guessed Catwoman was accustomed to having to negotiate her price. “A hundred K is a fair price for what I’m wanting.” She dug in her pocket and handed over a flash card. “It’s all on there.”

“Got a deadline for this?”

“One week.”

Catwoman nodded. “That’s doable.” She studied her with a curious expression. “Why are you doing this? Our mutual friend didn’t go into detail.”

“You don’t need details,” she said. “The less you know, the better.”

She didn’t say it but implied it clearly enough. Catwoman could be caught doing whatever it was she did, but if she only knew a few things, then Lex or whoever had caught her could not track the job back to her. 

The ferry returned to dock at Metropolis and she got off without saying goodbye to the other woman, as they’d arranged. She took her phone out of her purse and looked at the clock. It was almost five and she’d promised Clark she would spend the evening with him. 

As much as she tried not to admit it to herself, her stomach gave a little lurch at the thought of being with him. They’d been getting closer and closer in the past few weeks and it somehow seemed to make her day better. 

Clark had been oddly quiet the past few days. She had wondered if it was something she’d done, or something she’d said as they hadn’t been talking much since the party at Lex’s. They had gone horse-riding last weekend but he’d seemed distracted.

There had also been Stuart’s disappearance. Despite all her talk of him being ‘on his own’ once everything went down, she had gone to his apartment out of concern and was even more worried when she saw how much of a mess it was. Never having been the tidiest person herself, she would have understood at least a little mess but the place looked like it had been ransacked. 

The neighbour had told her some people had been by and she’d heard some kind of ruckus but given the neighbourhood they were in, had not stuck her head outside the door to find out what had happened. 

She didn’t dare call Stuart’s phone or try to contact him any other way. If he had indeed been tracked, a call to his phone would alert whoever had him. She always used a pre-paid cellphone to contact Stuart and made sure certain features were deactivated. 

She returned to her apartment and quickly showered and changed into jeans and a sweater. Clark liked her in jeans. He’d commented once about her shapely butt; not in a way that was meant to be sexist but letting her know that he loved her figure. She had never been overweight but still needed to exercise regularly to stay trim and often went jogging. Clark had gone running with her a few times although he’d jokingly complained about late nights working for his slave-driver boss and her wanting to be up early. 

By the time she was ready, it was almost six. Clark had an apartment across town. While not as luxurious as she assumed Lex’s penthouse would be, it was still a fairly modern construction. What was interesting was the décor. Clark had gone for modest furnishings which would have suited a rambling bungalow rather than a modern apartment. She knew he earned a substantial amount in his position as Lex’s executive assistant and he could have afforded luxury furniture. Instead, he’d opted for comfort. 

She loved that about him. In many ways, he was still a farmboy. He certainly didn’t act like an executive or throw his weight around like someone in his position normally would. Or so she had assumed. She had learned something from her father a long time ago to judge people by the way they treated others and Clark was always courteous. No matter who they were.

Even when it was obvious that he didn’t really like who he was dealing with, he was polite but cool. She had known a few men who treated people like they were a bug on the sidewalk. Unless they wanted something. Then they were charm itself. 

Clark greeted her with a smile as she entered his apartment. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. How was your day?”

“Oh, same as usual. How was yours?”

“Ugh.” He made a face. “Lex was bitching as usual.”

She smiled in sympathy. “Why do you stay if it’s that bad?”

Clark sighed. “You know how difficult it is to get a decent job right now. I hate to admit it, but the pay’s an incentive.” He stayed within her embrace. “I don’t know. I mean, at least I’m not working somewhere where I never have time to see my friends, or my family, or I’m out all hours of the night.”

“That’s true,” she said.

He let her go and turned to the counter, running a hand through his dark hair. “Anyway,” he said, with a soft smile which crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Seeing you makes it all better.”

“That’s quite a compliment, Clark Kent.”

“I meant every word.”

She loved that about him. With some guys it might sound trite or cliched, but he was always sincere. 

Clark poured them each a glass of wine and they sat on the couch. He took her hand and lifted it to kiss her knuckles. 

“I kind of missed you this week,” he said. “That’s my fault. I’m sorry. It’s just been really crazy at work.”

“I missed you too,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s been so crazy. Is there anything I can do?”

“Well, Lex did mention something about consulting with you on a project. Don’t ask me what it was about. But I think he needs some PR. Would you be willing to meet with him?”

Part of her wanted to say no. The man repulsed her. It wasn’t his looks. As looks went, his weren’t that bad. He certainly wasn’t unattractive by any means. It was his character that bothered her. She had heard enough about Lex to know he was not a good man and he treated others like they were beneath him. She could understand why Clark hated his job sometimes. For two men who had supposedly been friends once upon a time, Lex only treated him as a friend when it suited his purpose. Clark was just as much a target of his boss’ ire as anyone else, probably even more so. 

“Sure,” she said. “Why don’t you go ahead and set it up?”

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s great, thank you, Jo.”

She’d been using the alias for a while, but for some reason it felt weird to hear him use it. A big part of her wished she could hear him say her real name. 

God, why did she torture herself like this? As much as she wanted this to be real, it was never going to be. Once Clark found out the truth, he would never want anything to do with her ever again. He was going to hate her. 

Why did the thought of him hating her hurt so much? 

After they’d eaten dinner, a simple meal of pot roast which Clark had told her his mother had taught him, they again sat on the couch, watching the local news on television. She had curled her legs under her, her head on his shoulder, feeling quite comfortable. 

“This is nice,” she said softly. “I mean, who needs fancy restaurants. We could just skip to the delicious donuts and stay warm and cosy without worrying about what to wear, or how much to tip the waiter …”

“I agree,” he said. “Except the part about the donuts. Is that really what you live on?”

“Well, I used to,” she said. “I love maple donuts.”

“I’ll have to get some next time I’m at Dunkin’ Donuts,” he said. “You know, my ex, Chloe, used to live on coffee. It’s like she mainlined the stuff. Without fail, every time I walked into the Torch office, she’d have a cup of coffee on one side of the desk and her cellphone on the other.”

“The Torch?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I told you about that. Remember? The school newspaper?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Chloe wanted to work at the Daily Planet but it didn’t work out.”

“What happened?”

“Well, they only had a couple of spaces for interns the year she applied. Unfortunately the editor-in-chief didn’t like her history of writing what she called ‘unsubstantiated stories’ about meteor freaks.”

“That must have hurt,” she said careful to keep her voice even. Clark didn’t talk about Chloe a lot but she was always careful not to give anything away. Even just the slightest hitch in her tone could make him suspicious, if he was astute enough to catch it.

“Funny enough, her cousin got a job there a couple years later. I think she was interning for some army rag or something and got hired on the basis of her experience. Chloe was so upset.”

She frowned. She thought Chloe and Clark had broken up by then. Or maybe they were on the outs? All she remembered from her conversation with her cousin was that their relationship had started to change when she’d decided to go to Met U. 

“Well, I guess I can understand why she’d be upset,” she said. “I mean, if it was her dream job but someone else got it in her place. Especially someone she knew.”

She remembered Chloe calling her when she’d got the job at the Planet. Her cousin had sounded like she was happy for her, but there’d been a little note in Chloe’s voice that suggested she was not totally sincere. It was one of the reasons she’d tended to avoid her cousin after that, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

Of course, a year or so later, when she’d moved into the apartment at the Talon, things had changed considerably. She didn’t know what her cousin did for a living but Chloe had appeared happy with her lot. 

She wondered how Chloe would feel now that she was dating her ex-boyfriend? Would she feel once again that her place was being usurped? 

She couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. The fact that Chloe had missed out on the Daily Planet was not her fault, but it might have felt like her cousin was being overshadowed once more. She’d always known that the blonde had been a little insecure about her looks but had thought that Chloe having a steady boyfriend all through high school might have helped with that insecurity. 

“I wonder what happened to her?” Clark murmured.

“Her who?” she asked.

“Lois Lane.”

She chewed on her lip, trying not to react. “What do you mean? Who’s Lois Lane?”

“Chloe’s cousin. She got into some trouble at the Daily Planet. Some said she was drinking and using drugs but I don’t know. I don’t really believe that. She got fired from the Planet and she was working for the Inquisitor but she disappeared three years ago. No one’s heard from her since. Not even Chloe.”

Again, she frowned. Maybe she had been confused about the timeframe before, but there was no way if the couple had gone their separate ways that Clark would even know if Chloe had heard from her. 

She decided she needed to distract him before she went and said something which would give herself away. She sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck, turning around so one leg was draped over his lap.

“What are you doing?” he asked. 

“What do you think I’m doing?” she returned with a grin. 

“It looks to me like you’re planning something devious.”

She tried to adopt an innocent look. “Who? Me?”

“Yeah, you,” he said. She felt his big hands at her waist, supporting her as she straddled him. “What are you up to?”

“Maybe I decided we’d done enough talking for the night.”

He pretended to look wounded. “Am I boring you?”

She giggled and kissed him. He smirked at her as if refusing to respond. 

“Aw, c’mon Smallville. I wanna play. Don’t you wanna play?”

“You are very bad, missy.”

She giggled again. “Whatcha gonna do about it?” she asked. 

“Is that a dare?” he returned. 

She squealed as he tickled her, squirming on his lap. “No fair,” she replied with a pout. He’d already told her he wasn’t ticklish. 

He continued to tease her, until she swore revenge. “Oh, you’ll get revenge, huh? I’d like to see you try,” he retorted.

She grabbed a pillow and pummelled him with it. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“A pillow fight? Seriously?”

“Not chicken are you? Clarkie?”

“Don’t call me Clarkie!” he told her with a scowl. 

“Aww, poor widdle Clarkie, doesn’t like being teased.”

“That does it, missy! You are going down!”

Much laughter ensued as he grabbed another pillow and pummelled her with it. They continued to playfight until disaster struck. She sat up and stared at the feathers all over the couch and the floor, a hand over her mouth.

“Oh no!” she said. 

Clark stared at her, then began to laugh. “You are a handful,” he said.

She aimed a punch at his shoulder, pretending to be offended. He grabbed her wrist. She tried to punch him with the other hand and he grabbed that one as well, pushing her down on the cushion. She gazed up at him, her amusement dying as she looked into his eyes. 

He kissed her deeply, exploring her mouth with his tongue. She felt his grip relax on her wrists and wound her arms around his neck, pulling him down.

She moaned softly as his hands began to explore her body. He had such big hands. Bigger than any other man she had ever been with. It was odd that for someone who had spent so much time on a farm, his skin was soft and not at all callused. 

His hand slipped beneath her blouse to cup her breast and she moaned again, her body tingling at his closeness. They hadn’t done anything more intimate than sleep in the same bed together or make out a little, so this was further than they’d been before. She wanted him, more than she’d ever wanted any other man. Maybe it was time they took it further, she thought.

Clark stopped kissing her and gazed down at her, a soft smile on his lips. She looked back up at him, wondering what to say. Just as he started to say something, she heard the ringtone from her phone. She sat up, reluctantly pushing him away.

“I should get that,” she said. 

She got off the couch and grabbed her bag, pulling the phone out. 

“Hello?” An accented voice responded to her. 

“Hello, I am calling about the car you have for sale?”

She frowned. “You’ve got the wrong number.” She ended the call and looked at Clark. “I guess they mis-dialled. It’s probably time I left anyway.”

He came over and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Do you have to? Why don’t you stay?”

“I … I would love to except I have a meeting with a client in the morning.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“Why don’t we go away next weekend?” he suggested quietly. “I know this little place. It’s only about a couple of hours’ drive out of town. It’s a little isolated but we wouldn’t be interrupted with work.”

She kissed him. “That sounds wonderful. I’ll have to check my diary but I think I could make it.”

“Great. I’ll set it up.”

She smiled and went to the door. She opened it, turning to look at him. “Goodnight, Clark.”


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark talks to Chloe

For once, Lex seemed to be in a good mood when Clark got into work the morning after he’d had dinner with Jo.

“’Morning, Clark,” Lex said with a smile. He put a couple of folders down on the desk. “Would you mind going over these?”

“What are they?” Clark asked.

“New business merger proposals. We’re meeting with the CEOs on Friday, so I need you to study up on the companies.”

“You seem cheerful this morning.”

“Yeah, I met this woman at the opera last night.” The expression on his face suggested he’d done more than just spend an evening watching opera with the woman.

Clark remembered a few years ago that Lex had had a series of one-night stands which had ended in murder. The woman who had tried to frame him had met him at the opera. Clark had disapproved of his friend’s actions then, but it looked like Lex hadn’t learnt his lesson.

He didn’t voice any of that and just smiled.

“I had dinner with Jo last night and I mentioned the project you wanted to discuss with her.”

Lex nodded. “Great! How’s it going with you two? You looked very cosy at the party.”

“Going good,” he said. He chose not to reveal any more than that. If Lex sensed that his feelings for his girlfriend ran deeper than he led him to believe, he was sure that the other man would make her the target of his anger when he learned what Clark had done.

“You’ve been dating … what? A month?”

“Almost two.”

“Must be getting serious.”

Unlike you, I suppose, Clark thought darkly, doing his best to ensure his thoughts didn’t show on his face. Lex didn’t seem to notice and left the office without a backward glance. Clark sighed and picked up the files, skimming through them. One of the companies Lex was negotiating with was the one in Gotham.

He left the office at the end of the day and walked down to the subway, merging with the other commuters before speeding off to Watchtower.

Chloe was sitting on one of the couches with a mug of herbal tea in front of her. As he entered through the double doors, she picked up the mug and sipped, making a face.

“Ugh!”

He grinned as Oliver spoke from his position at the console.

“Sorry it’s not your usual caffeine-laden beverage, Sidekick, but you know it’s not good for the sproglet.”

She snorted and scrunched up her nose at her husband before looking up at Clark.

“Hey, Clark. What’s up?”

“There was something I wanted to talk to you about. But it can wait. Have you been able to get any more out of Stuart?”

Oliver shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. He’s very protective of this woman he’s been working with.”

“I guess there is something to be said for loyalty,” Chloe returned. “Why do you want to know?”

“If what J’onn says is true, this woman could be putting herself in a lot of danger.”

“Lex hasn’t given any indication that he knows what’s going on, has he?” his friend asked.

He shook his head. “Not so far. He hasn’t said anything about the hacking but I know the guys in I.T are still looking into it. I’ve done my best to block them.”

Chloe nodded. “Good. I think you’re right. While I don’t think their intentions are totally honourable, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Stuart at least seems interested in working with us.”

Clark was surprised at that. “He does?”

“I’ve mentioned it in passing,” she told him. “Just something about being able to use a guy with his skills. Of course, he came back with something like they couldn’t be that good if I was able to track him down.”

Oliver scoffed. “Is he trying to be sexist?”

Chloe shrugged. “Is there any other way to take that?” Her husband snorted as if he disagreed with that premise entirely. Even Clark knew Chloe was just as good, if not better than some men at hacking. She again looked at Clark. “So, how are things going with your lady friend?”

“Uh, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

It was as good an opening as he was going to get, he thought. Chloe nodded and pushed her mug away, making herself more comfortable on the couch. She patted the cushion next to her, a clear invitation for him to sit there.

He was glad that he could still confide in her. He’d heard of some ‘relationship expert’ commenting that it wasn’t possible for two people who had dated for a long time to stay friends but he didn’t believe that. It wasn’t as if their actual split had been acrimonious. They had just drifted apart.

Oliver coughed. “Uh, should I be somewhere else? Is this something you want to talk about in private?”

Clark shook his head. “No. It’s nothing, uh, personal. I just … I’ve been noticing things about Jo that seem a little, uh, off.”

His friend looked curious, clearly wanting details. Chloe maintained a neutral expression, obviously knowing Clark would get around to explaining.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like we went to this party at Lex’s mansion in Smallville and she was kind of cool toward Lex, yet friendly toward everyone else.”

“Well, that’s nothing unusual. I’d be the same,” Chloe said, wrinkling her nose. Her dislike of Lex was obvious. As Clark had told Jo, his ex-best friend and his girlfriend had never really gotten along. It wasn’t that Chloe was a cynic. She just tended to not trust people like Lex who had a lot of secrets of their own but acted as if the rest of the world owed them everything. Even when Clark had been good friends with Lex, he’d known the other man hid a lot of his own secrets. It was hypocritical of him to expect Clark to be so forthcoming.

“That’s not all. We were sleeping in the same room and I woke up and she wasn’t there.”

“Maybe she was hungry? Or just couldn’t sleep?”

“I heard her downstairs and she was talking to the maid about the agency that employed her. She said it was a friend who was looking for a maid service.”

Chloe frowned. “I’m still not seeing the problem.”

“Me either,” Oliver said.

“There are times when she acts like she’s someone else,” Clark told them, without going into any detail. He knew it wasn’t helpful but he didn’t know how to explain it. Jo could act so friendly and flirty one minute and be completely cool the next. Almost as if she was two different personalities.

He’d noticed it again the night before, after dinner, when she’d suddenly turned and wanted to make-out. Not that he minded the making out. It was just the way it had happened. Like she was changing the subject.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Clark, do you have feelings for this woman?” his friend asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

Chloe nodded, her jaw shifting so it looked like she was biting her upper lip with her bottom teeth. She often did that when she was trying to think of a diplomatic way to say something. She’d got better at it over the years.

“Well, devil’s advocate and all that but are you sure these things that you’re noticing are anomalies or just projections of your own fears?”

Oliver snickered. “Psych 101, anyone?”

Clark was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Look, you know I love you, but remember in freshman year when you kept pining after Lana Lang? Even though she had an actual boyfriend at the time?”

He hadn’t thought about Whitney Fordman in years. Lana had been dating the blond football player for at least a couple of years, although even her aunt Nell had thought she was too young at fourteen, almost fifteen, to be getting seriously involved with a high school senior. Clark had had his problems with Whitney. Especially when the quarterback had become jealous, seeing Clark walk Lana home late one night. Smallville High had its hazing traditions like any other school and Whitney had chosen Clark to be the target of one of those traditions. To be strung up like a scarecrow.

Eventually Whitney had changed his tune and they’d become if not friends, at least friendlier. When the football jock’s father had died, he’d decided to enlist in the marines. He’d died on a mission in Indonesia.

“What about Lana?” Clark asked.

“It used to piss me off how you were always so blind where Lana was concerned. It was like the rest of the world didn’t exist.”

He remembered that. He also remembered a few of her accusations where she’d berated him for refusing to take any other point of view, just because he’d had a crush on the pretty brunette.

“But I chose you in the end.”

Chloe smiled softly for a second before sobering.

“Yeah, you did, but that’s not the point, Clark.”

“What is the point?”

“You could never be objective when it came to Lana. It was like she could do nothing wrong in your eyes. Even when you had your disagreements, it didn’t take long for you to make it up. You and I had our fair share of arguments, sure, but somehow those seemed to be world-ending type fights.”

Since most of their fights had to do with Chloe’s digging into his secrets, it was inevitable that those arguments would have been doozies compared to the occasional spat he’d had with Lana. Usually because of something Whitney had done or said which he hadn’t agreed with.

“I’m still not seeing what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think you’re looking at this objectively. I think you’re afraid of being with someone new so you’re trying to find excuses not to take things a step further. I mean, have you actually slept with her yet?”

“We’ve slept in the same bed, but I’m guessing that’s not what you meant.”

“I think you know what I meant. Intimacy, Clark.”

“I was actually thinking of taking her away next weekend. There’s this bed-and-breakfast place …”

Chloe nodded. “That’s great, Clark, but if you’re having these issues …”

“They’re not issues! Not really. I mean, I just …”

“You need to quit backpedalling and decide what you really want. If you care about this woman, then you need to decide if these concerns you have are the deal-breaker.”

“What do you mean by deal-breaker?” he asked.

Oliver interjected. He had been listening to most of the conversation, nodding along as if he agreed with whatever his wife was saying. It was plain that the couple had talked a lot about her past relationships.

“Let me take this one, Sidekick. A deal-breaker is sort of like when Chloe and I started dating. I knew she had a history with you and I had to decide if that history was enough to make me back off. I mean, I had a lot to live up to when it came to you.”

Clark frowned. He had never thought of it as some kind of competition. The idea that Oliver would think he couldn’t measure up to him was almost laughable.

“It’s not a competition, Oliver,” he said quietly. “In some ways, you’re a better man than I am.”

Oliver looked taken aback at that.

“You’re both good men, in your own way. And Ollie knows that,” Chloe returned, with a slight frown at her husband. “But getting back to my point. Do your feelings override those concerns or are you more worried about what these things mean?”

That was the problem. He didn’t really know. How much could he really know about a woman he’d been seeing for only a few weeks?

“Maybe a weekend away would help us get to know each other better,” he said. “Away from interruptions, and work.”

“Works for me,” Oliver said. “One of the first things I did when we were dating was take Chloe away from any distractions.”

She grinned. “You know, that weekend away was the first time I actually got to see the sillier side of Oliver Queen. And it was one of the first things that made me fall in love with you.”

“Oh, really? What were the other things?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, her expression flirty and full of promise.

Clark rolled his eyes and smirked at his friends. He might be happy that they had each other, but he didn’t need to know the gory details.

He started to get up from the couch and felt his phone vibrate. He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

 _Hi. Coming over for dinner? Bring dessert. You know what I like_. Jo had sent a flirty emoji. Clark chuckled.

His friends looked at him curiously. “Message?”

“Yeah, it’s Jo, asking me over for dinner. She wants me to bring dessert.”

“Dessert as in actual dessert or do you think she means something else?”

He shook his head. “No, she told me her favourite last night. She loves maple donuts.”

Chloe’s face took on an odd expression. “Maple donuts? Really?”

“Something wrong with that?”

She shook her head. “No. Not really. Uh, you don’t happen to have a picture of this woman, do you?”

“Yeah. It’s on my phone. Why?”

He’d taken the picture without Jo realising it. She had told him she didn’t like her photo being taken and refused to even take selfies. Clark had thought it a little odd but hadn’t asked her for details. Wanting to get a picture of her anyway, he’d taken it when they had gone to dinner one night. He’d gone to the bathroom and turned back to see her sitting at the table staring dreamily out the window. He’d loved the way she looked in the light and decided to take a photo, intending to show her later, but had never got around to it.

“Can you send it to me?” Chloe asked.

“Sure, but I don’t know why you …”

“I just thought I’d like to get to know the woman who finally managed to capture the heart of Clark Kent,” she said.

He frowned. That wasn’t really what he thought she was going to say, but decided to leave it alone. He left Watchtower, promising to send her the photo later.  
He sent Jo a message telling her he would be there shortly and stopped by the local donut store for her maple donuts.

It was getting dark when he arrived at Jo’s apartment. She greeted him with a smile and a kiss.

“Hey, you,” she said. He studied her. She had dressed in tailored grey pants and a dark green blouse, with her hair loose down her back. It was simple but pretty.

They moved into the main room and she poured them each a glass of pinot noir, chattering animatedly as she bustled about the kitchen, cooking their meal. He responded automatically to whatever she was saying, caught up in watching her work. It reminded him so much of when he was a child, sitting at the counter watching his mother cooking dinner.

His father had often cooked breakfasts on Sunday mornings and sometimes evenings when he felt his wife needed a break, but the kitchen had mostly been Martha’s domain. It wasn’t anything sexist, as far as Clark knew. His parents had shared everything else equally.

Yet he’d always loved the way his mother would get so absorbed in cooking, listening absently to his chatter as he talked about school and what his friends were up to.

This was sort of the reverse, he thought, as Jo continued to chatter about her day. The light above was harsh but at times it caught the highlights in her hair, giving it a kind of glow. Almost like a halo, he thought.

Okay, that was sappy, he thought with a grin. She turned and must have caught the grin.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing, really.”

“Uh huh. Like I’ll believe that, Smallville.”

He mock-glared at her. “What are you trying to say?” he asked.

“I think I know you pretty well by now, Clark Kent.”

“Yeah? What am I thinking now?” he said with a cheesy smirk at her, pretending to look her up and down as if he was checking out her body.

She leaned across the counter and kissed him. “You’re incorrigible,” she replied.

God he loved this woman!

As she turned back to her cooking, the truth dawned on him. He was in love with her! Somewhere along the way, he’d fallen deeply, irrevocably in love with her. Whatever perceived problems there might be, that wouldn’t change how he felt.

Maybe Chloe was right. Maybe he’d let his own fears about his past failed relationships colour his new one. The one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it seems unusual for Clark to go to Chloe for advice, but for me it just fit.


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois breaks into Lex's office

Getting the access card from Catwoman had been a piece of cake. The other woman had even offered to help her break into the offices, but she’d declined the offer. She had already lost one of her ‘accomplices’ for want of a better word. She still had no idea where Stuart was and it had been over a week since he’d disappeared.

She had managed to get a black polo shirt and pants, the same style the crew wore to clean the offices at LexCorp. From what she had managed to glean from staking out the building, the crew were always scheduled to start their work at ten every night. Entry was always at the back of the building, rather than via the lobby. 

She watched the building from across the street, keeping to the shadows in case anyone who had known her at the Daily Planet was working late and happened to be walking by. While she had made some changes to her appearance through the application of make-up, someone who knew her well would recognise her. Perhaps not immediately, but enough that if they saw her they would eventually figure it out. It was obvious Clark had not seen a photo of her three years ago, or else he wouldn’t be dating her. 

Huffing and pushing Clark from her mind, she continued watching the building, waiting until the cleaning crew entered the building. Once they were inside, she made her way casually across the street and took out the card, swiping it through the reader to open the door. The crew had already gone upstairs to begin their tasks for the night. She hoped security would just think she was just a crew member running late for work. 

The bank of elevators was just out of sight of the security station in the lobby. She entered through the door to the stairwell and went to the elevator, using her card to access one of the cars. The double doors slid open smoothly and she got in, hardly daring to breathe as she pressed the button for the 55th floor. The doors closed and the elevator began to move upwards. 

Lex’s office was locked but she tried the card, keeping her fingers crossed it would work. The lock deactivated with a quiet beep and she released the breath she’d been holding. Of course, Lex was arrogant enough to believe that none of the cleaning crew would be smart enough to try to break into his computer.

She quickly went over to the desk and pretended to be cleaning, moving things around on top of the desk. As far as she was aware, Lex didn’t have surveillance inside his office. Only in the corridor outside. She wasn’t about to take any chances. 

She opened up the laptop, switching it on and access the system through the ‘back door’. She inserted a flash drive and pressed a few keys to begin copying over data. She figured most of it would be encrypted but she knew someone who would be able to decrypt the files. 

She decided while she was there to look around the office and see if she could find anything else incriminating. Just as she heard the beep of the computer alerting her to the completed task, she heard the sound of the elevator. Security must be patrolling, she thought.

Working quickly, she removed the flash drive and began cleaning in earnest. The door lock beeped and the security guard entered. 

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be down on the tenth floor with the others.”

She looked up as if startled, but continued working as if she hadn’t understood him. When she’d been planning the disguise, she had bought a black wig, colouring a few strands with grey hair dye, then used make-up to give herself the appearance of a Hispanic woman in her forties. She’d even gone so far as to pad the clothes she was wearing to make her middle appear thicker. 

“You speak English?” the guard asked. He grasped her wrist and lifted it, forcing her to look at him. “English?”

“Yo no hablo ingles,” she muttered with a heavy accent. She’d been in a couple of plays during high school and one of the characters had had an accent of someone south of the border. She just hoped it was believable.

“Goddamn ‘spic,” the guard muttered rudely. “You … tenth floor. Diez. Understand?”

“Si. Diez.”

She gathered up her gear and started to move past him. He put a hand out again to stop her.

“What’s your name? Nombre?”

“Maria,” she said, mentally congratulating herself for having had the foresight to get a list of names of those contracted by the agency to clean the LexCorp buildings. The agency would more than likely face some serious questions once security figured out what had happened but there was nothing she could do about that.

The man nodded and gestured impatiently to the door. “Go then.”

She quickly left the office and returned to the elevator, pressing the button for the first floor. The guard watched from the doorway until the doors closed. 

She left the elevator and headed to the stairwell, pressing the button to exit out the back door. With any luck, those in the security office wouldn’t be astute enough to realise that she wasn’t actually part of the cleaning crew until much later. 

The streets were quiet for that time of night and she was able to get back to her apartment in good time. She stripped off the disguise and scrubbed her face until it was free of make-up. Too tired to bother with taking a shower, she changed into sleep pants and top and went to bed. 

She woke at the sound of her alarm and groaned, glancing at the clock on her phone. Five am. It was still dark out. Nevertheless, she got out of bed and changed into running gear, ready to go out for a run. 

It was drizzling as she left the apartment. She often felt like an idiot going out running in the rain but knew she couldn’t avoid it. She had once interviewed an athlete who had told her they’d been obese as a child and when they’d decided to change they had decided that rain wasn’t going to stop them going out for a run. It wasn’t as if they would melt, they’d joked. She had taken the lesson to heart.

She’d been out for about half an hour when she picked up company. 

“Good morning,” Clark said cheerfully.

She couldn’t help grinning back at him as he began jogging alongside her. She hadn’t seen him for a couple of days but he’d told her Lex was busting his butt about some meeting on Friday. 

“Hi,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

“Oh, I thought I’d stop by the apartment, maybe take you out for breakfast, but then I saw you out running. You’re soaked.”

“It’s raining,” she told him unnecessarily.

“Noticed that,” he returned, chuckling. 

She slowed to a fast walk. “So, breakfast huh? What did you have in mind?”

“Well, we could go have breakfast at the local diner or I could get some bagels. Or croissants. And we could eat at your place.”

“Ooh, bagels sound perfect.”

“Bagels it is then,” he said, smiling so widely she could see pointed incisors. God, she loved his smile. Maybe it wasn’t perfect but that was what she loved about it. He was a good-looking man but he wasn’t afraid to show that he did have some flaws. Not that they were flaws really, she told herself, knowing she was babbling in her head. 

Clark grinned back at her. He walked with her to her apartment building and followed her upstairs. She took her key from a pocket inside her jacket and opened the door. As they entered, her eyes widened. She’d forgotten about the gear she’d dropped in the corner the night before.

She turned and smiled at Clark. “So, why don’t I go shower and you go get breakfast,” she suggested.

“Trying to get rid of me?” he asked. 

She faked a snicker and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him.

“Not in the slightest. But as you pointed out a few minutes ago, I’m soaked through. I need to get out of these wet clothes.”

He laughed. “Well, all right. But only because I don’t want you to catch pneumonia.”

She watched as he turned away and went to the door. He paused and looked at her. 

“You know, I could jump in the shower with you. I’m sure you’d love me to wash your back.”

“Will you get out of here!” she said, laughing. 

He pretended to pout, but left, closing the door behind him. She turned and gathered up her things from the floor, carrying them into the bedroom. The wig and the cosmetics she’d used the night before were still on the bathroom vanity and she quickly gathered those up and dumped in the bottom drawer of the unit, relieved at having avoided the close call. 

She quickly showered, snickering as she thought of the marathon showers she used to take as a teenager. It didn’t go down well in her father’s house. New recruits in the barracks were restricted to showers of two minutes or less. Her showers tended to be an hour or even more. Now, of course, she had too much she needed to do. 

She wondered what she would be like if she ever had kids of her own. She had become friends with one of her neighbours; a woman with three children. Her husband was always off on missions which he couldn’t talk about and the mother would often ask for help with babysitting so she could go and get groceries without the children demanding things she couldn’t afford. 

She would complain a lot about never having time to even sit down on the toilet because one or more of her children would be in in the next minute wanting something. Marathon showers were just not possible.

“I wonder if it’ll be like that for Clark and me,” she said to herself as she brushed her hair. She paused and stared at her reflection. Did she want children with Clark? Was that ever going to be possible? 

“I’m back!”

“I’ll be out in a sec,” she called back, lifting the hairbrush once again to finish brushing her hair. She checked her reflection and left the bathroom.

Clark had bought them coffees as well from the local coffee shop. 

“One non-fat latte for you,” he said, “and one full-cream macchiato for me.”

She smirked at him. “On a health kick?”

He grinned back at her. “Life is short. Might as well enjoy it while you can.”

She crinkled her nose at him while taking her cup. “Life is long, Smallville, and you are what you eat.” She deliberately swept her gaze down his body. “Then again, I’d love to know your secret. You seem to eat whatever you want and still look like that.”

“I grew up on a farm,” he said simply. 

They continued to banter back and forth over breakfast, then talked about their weekend plans. Clark was going to pick her up Friday night after work.

“So, what do I pack for?” she asked. “I mean, do I pack for snow bunny, or a weekend in the tropics …”

“We’re going away for a weekend, honey. There’s only so far you can drive in two hours.”

Clark’s phone beeped with a text message and he sighed as he read it. 

“Lex.” He rose from his seat. “I have to get to work.”

“Is it that bad?” she asked.

“He’s just anxious, I guess. He has a lot riding on this new business deal.”

“If this deal is so important, then maybe we should postpone the weekend,” she said, wondering why she felt her heart practically plummeting. She had to admit she was looking forward to spending a weekend with him, away from work.

He kissed her. “Nothing will keep me from this weekend with you,” he said. “Neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night …”

She chuckled. “That’s the postal service, sweetie.”

“Made you laugh though,” he said with a grin, embracing her.

She shoved him playfully. “Go. Before your boss has a conniption fit.”

“I’m goin’, I’m goin’. I’ll see you Friday.”

“Can’t wait,” she said.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark discovers a problem at work

Clark left the apartment and headed to the office. Instead of going all the way up to his floor, he stopped the elevator on the fifth floor. A woman who worked on the floor below his, in the secretarial pool, sent him an odd look, but didn’t comment as he left the elevator. She’d asked him out once but he’d never accepted the invitation. He hoped she hadn’t been about to ask him again. 

He walked down the corridor and used his access card to unlock the entry to the security office, ignoring the startled looks from some of the men working on the surveillance systems and knocked on the door of the supervisor’s office. 

Two men stood behind the desk, studying something on a large screen. One of them, Mac, was of short stature with close-cropped white hair and a slight hunch in his stance. The other was at least twenty years younger with skin the colour of milk chocolate. He reminded Clark a little of a boy he’d played with often as a child. 

“What’s up?” he asked.

Mac looked up. “Mr Kent.”

Mac had worked for LexCorp for many years, since before it had officially changed its name. He had been Clark’s supervisor when he’d worked in the security office, before he’d been promoted. The older man was in his late sixties but had no intention of retiring.

He’d sent the text message rather than Lex. Clark hadn’t wanted to lie to Jo, but he figured the less she knew, the better.

“Mac. Got your message. What’s going on?”

“I think we had a break-in last night.” He moved away from the monitor. “Here. Take a look for yourself.”

He studied the monitor. The surveillance recording showed him the image of a heavyset woman, possibly middle-aged, walking down the corridor away from Lex’s office. She was dressed in the uniform of the cleaning crew.

“She looks like one of the cleaning crew from the agency.”

“Yeah, except they were on the tenth floor. We checked the security logs and the card she used was assigned to one of the crew. I called the agency and the boss told me the card was stolen. The woman it was stolen from was afraid of getting into trouble so she didn’t report it until the boss called her in.”

That was understandable, Clark thought. 

“What do you want us to do?”

“You let me take care of this,” he said. “Download everything you have of this woman and give me the recordings, then destroy the surveillance.”

“You sure about that?” Mac asked.

“I’m sure. If Lex needs to know anything, I’ll tell him.”

He watched as Mac downloaded the files and saved them on a flash drive, handing it over. The older man appeared confused by the order not to say anything to anyone else about the incident, but didn’t question Clark’s orders. 

As soon as Clark had a spare moment that day, he took the flash drive over to Watchtower where Chloe promised him she would look over the recording and see what she could come up with. 

He spent the next day or so studying the files Lex had given him, knowing it would take at least a couple of days for Chloe to look over the information, as well as everything else she was working on. 

He had a theory that the woman was somehow connected to the same person Stuart Campbell had been working with. Maybe she was the person. 

He doubted he would know for sure until after the weekend. As he left work late that Friday night to pick up his girlfriend, he couldn’t help feeling a little excited. He’d reserved a room at a bed and breakfast Chloe had recommended to him. It was roughly two hours’ drive out of town but the scenery was pretty. The inn even had maps to some of the local trails. 

Jo was waiting outside her apartment building when he pulled up in the truck. He got out and grabbed her bag, ushering her into the cab. It had started to rain and she looked a little wet, despite the umbrella she’d been using. He waited until she got in, then ran around the other side of the truck.

“Thanks Smallville,” she said, smiling at him as he handed her a towel to dry herself off. 

It rained steadily as he drove south. The sky grew darker and darker until it was almost pitch black.

“Ugh, I hate driving in the countryside at night,” Jo commented. 

“It’s not so bad,” he replied. Then again, he had enhanced visual acuity which helped him see better when it was dark. It had come in handy on the farm when he’d had to do chores late at night. 

“Better you than me, then,” she returned with a grin. 

“When I was a kid, I used to love coming out late at night and just lay under the stars. In the city, you can’t really see them because there’s either smog or too much light from all the buildings.”

“You really are a country boy, aren’t you?” she asked.

From her tone, she didn’t appear to mind. It was funny, he thought. When he was growing up, all he had been able to think about was leaving the farm and moving to the city to fulfil his dreams of being a reporter, using his abilities to help people. Now that he was living in the city, he missed the farm.

“Would you have stayed on the farm if things had worked out that way?”

“Actually, I was studying journalism in college.”

She stared at him with a look of surprise. “Journalism? Really?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “Chloe used to complain that I never took it seriously when we were working together on the Torch. Then we got this new principal. Mr Reynolds. My second year of high school. He called me into his office and told me I was a slacker then assigned me this essay: ‘Where do I see myself in five years’. When I was writing it, I realised that I didn’t want to spend my life as a farmer and I figured in five years I’d be in college, studying journalism. It just fit. I mean, sure, I joined the Torch because Chloe begged me to, but I did like chasing stories.”

He knew his father wouldn’t have wanted him to drop out of college, not with a year to go. Jonathan had once dreamed of playing pro-football and living in the big city, but he’d stayed behind for his father, who had developed heart problems in his forties. He’d also felt that Clark had a greater destiny than the farm, even though Clark had fought it. 

Maybe what he was really doing wasn’t quite what his father had envisioned, but it was important work and that was what mattered. 

The inn appeared to be quiet by the time they got there. They’d stopped at a small restaurant just out of the city to eat dinner, knowing it would be fairly late by the time they got to their destination. 

The parking area was already full. At least the rain had stopped, he thought as they got out of the truck and followed the cobblestoned path to the house.

It looked like a nineteenth-century manor home, with old-fashioned siding which appeared to be well-maintained. It had clearly been modernised at some point but the owners had done their best to ensure the upgrades had stayed in keeping with the look of the place. 

“The McDougal Inn,” Jo observed. “Nice.”

A woman with vibrant red hair smiled uncertainly at them as they approached the desk.

“Clark Kent,” he said. “We have a reservation for two.”

“Mr Kent. Oh dear. Uh, I tried to call your number, but …”

He grimaced. This didn’t sound good. “What’s happened?” he asked. “I confirmed my reservation yesterday.”

“Yes, I know. I spoke with you. The problem is the pipe burst in the only vacant room I have left. I’m afraid it’s unusable.”

Jo frowned. “Well, can’t you get some other guests to share a room or something?”

Clark nudged her. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. It wouldn’t have been fair to the other guests to force them out. 

Jo sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

Clark smiled at the woman, who introduced herself as Maggie McDougal. She was descended from the original owners.

“Perhaps I can take a look. I grew up on a farm. We were used to pipes bursting.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked, clearly surprised that a guest would do such a thing.

“Not at all,” he said.

She told him where the room was and he went upstairs, following her directions to find the room. As he did so, he overheard the two women remarking on his willingness to help.

“He’s sweet like that,” Jo told Maggie.

He’d been expecting the worst as he looked inside the room. The rug had been pulled up and furniture pulled aside to keep it from getting wet. A bucket was in the middle of the floor, catching all the drips from the overhead pipe, which appeared to be only cracked rather than fully burst. It was easily fixable, he thought, using his heat vision to weld the pipe and close the leak. 

Once he’d repaired the pipe he got rid of the bucket and moved the furniture, setting it all up just in time as his girlfriend opened the door. 

“Wow!” she said. “You really are handy to have around, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “Yup.”

She put her bag down in the corner. There was an old-fashioned wooden rail which he guessed was used to hang guests’ clothing, since the room didn’t have an actual closet. He put that down to the age of the house. Next to the rail was a screen where they could change clothes.

Jo took something from the bag and smiled at him before going back out into the hallway. Clark grabbed his own bag and took out his toiletries and a pair of pyjama pants.

He wasn’t sure what Jo was expecting that night. They had avoided the subject of sex, although they’d done more than just make-out a few times. They had talked about a lot of things on the drive but even then the subject of sleeping together just hadn’t come up. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. Hell, she was a very attractive woman and he was a red-blooded male. Even if he was from another planet, he thought wryly. 

The door opened and Jo came back in. She smiled at him.

“Bathroom’s free.”

“Thanks,” he responded, going out to brush his teeth. 

When he returned to the room a couple of minutes later, she was already settled in bed. He was unsurprised to find she appeared a little nervous. 

“Everything okay?” he asked as he got into bed beside her.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine,” she said. “I just … I mean, I know we had that weekend in Smallville, but I …”

He reached over and stroked her arm, hoping that would make her relax a little. 

She sighed. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about us, actually. Over the last few days. I mean I … I almost didn’t come tonight. I wasn’t sure if we, I …”

She was babbling. He’d noticed she always babbled when she was either nervous or things had got a little intense.

“The thing is, I kept going over and over in my head all the reasons why this wasn’t a good idea, but then I thought how I like being with you. How I like who I am when I’m with you, and …”

“Jo,” he said, cutting her off gently. “It’s okay.”

She looked at him, hazel eyes glistening in the light from the bedside lamp. 

“I really care about you, Clark. I just … I’ve made so many mistakes in my life.”

“None of that matters,” he said. He moved closer, wrapping his arms around her. 

He could understand her reticence. He hadn’t been with any woman since Chloe and while he didn’t regret his time with the woman he now considered one of his closest friends, he often wondered if they’d made a mistake in sleeping together. 

He felt none of that with Jo. Being with her just felt right. Even if they didn’t do anything intimate that weekend, it didn’t matter because he could just enjoy it without any kind of pressure. It was as she had said. He liked who he was when he was with her. Even though she didn’t know his true purpose for working with Lex, she made it worthwhile. 

He kissed her and started to pull away gently, but she looked up at him with doe eyes. Chloe had often looked at him the same way when she’d been a little unsure of herself. His friend would never admit it, but he’d known she was not as confident as she allowed others to think she was. As much as he’d always found it difficult to lie to her, she had never been able to hide her insecurities from him for very long. X-ray vision had nothing to do with it. 

In many ways, Jo was very similar. He had the sense she chose to put on a tough exterior around most people but he’d seen her softer side. Sometimes it was like she was two different people, he thought. 

“Clark?” Her voice was soft; barely above a whisper. He looked at her. Her gaze shifted from one side to the other as if her thoughts were racing. There was just something so vulnerable in her gaze that he wanted to hold her and protect her. 

Yet another part of him could not be denied. It had been weeks of coming so frustratingly close, only to have that chance taken away. He could think of a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t. The main ones, of course, being his secret. All of his secrets.

He’d had a long conversation with his mother when he’d visited her, wondering if he should tell Jo everything. She’d told him that if he intended to continue the relationship then his girlfriend did deserve to know. She wasn’t against him having sex with Jo. He was almost thirty, after all, and not even a Kryptonian could be expected to stay celibate. It was just a question of timing. Maybe Jo needed to know the potential risks of being with him, so she could decide for herself.

He’d debated it in his head for a long time. He’d already been with Chloe, so he knew he could control his abilities, even in the heat of the moment. However, his ex-girlfriend had known his secret and thus knew what she was getting into. 

This was different. This was the woman he hoped to spend the rest of his life with. Would she be as understanding?

Then again, he couldn’t exactly see the future, as Chloe had once told him. Sometimes it was just about living in the moment. 

He looked at her and saw she was frowning. He wished he could read her mind, he thought. 

She rolled over so she was laying on top of him. 

“Smallville, you think too much.”


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois has a revelation

She had known that as uncertain as she’d felt about how to proceed, Clark seemed to be just as nervous. She realised they were both over-thinking things and that was causing their hesitation. 

So she decided if he wasn’t going to take the lead, it was up to her. Clark didn’t seem too startled by her action, a slow grin spreading across his face as she looked down at him. She felt him brushing her hair back to kiss her. 

He rolled over in the bed, gazing tenderly down at her. She couldn’t help wondering why they hadn’t done this sooner, even though they really had only been going out a few weeks. There was just something about him that made her feel like she had been looking for him all her life.

Their kisses deepened, becoming more passionate. Clark slid the straps of her nightgown down her arms, pressing light kisses to her shoulders as he did so. She let him undress her, loving the way he stroked her body. When it was her turn, she explored every part of him, feeling the play of muscles beneath her hands.

There were no words exchanged as they made love. It was almost as if they had a language all their own as they gazed into each other’s eyes. When they did come together, she was almost surprised by the depth of her own feelings. She had tried to make herself step back, out of the situation. To pretend she didn’t feel anything. With him, she realised that was just not going to be possible.

Clark was asleep next to her when she woke from a dream she didn’t remember, her heart pounding. She didn’t know what had alarmed her, but as she turned her head to look at him, she wondered if the dream had involved him. She’d had a nightmare once before where she’d had to watch him die and the thought of living without him had been more than she could bear. 

She slid out of bed, shivering a little as she stood by the window, gazing out into the darkness. These old places were great for romantic getaways but they weren’t great for central heating. 

She turned to the bed but could only see the shape of the man she loved.

Wait a minute, she thought. I love him?

She lifted her hands to her face, realising it was the truth. She had fallen in love with him. The one man she should never have fallen for. 

Oh God, what am I going to do?

“Honey?”

She turned at Clark’s soft enquiry. “Clark?”

“Come back to bed. It’s too cold to be out there.”

“You’re right,” she replied, just as softly. She padded on bare feet back to the bed and got in between the covers, realising she was still shivering. Clark wrapped an arm around her.

“I’ll keep you warm,” he said. “For as long as you need.”

How about the rest of my life? she thought. 

She dreaded what would happen when he found out the truth. He was going to hate her. Not that she would blame him. After all, she was planning to destroy his boss’ reputation. Even if he was not happy in his job, or with what Lex did, he was still going to go down with the ship. 

What could she do? She couldn’t just walk away. Not now that her heart was involved. It was going to hurt her as much as it was going to hurt him. 

Maybe she should … No, she had to finish what she had started. It was the only way she could ever be assured of never having to look over her shoulder. Lex had to go down.   
She fell asleep in his arms.

The next morning, she was quiet at breakfast. There were a few other couples milling about the dining room. Some were choosing food from the buffet. She hesitated, not wanting to engage in conversation with them. 

Clark guided her gently with a hand on her back, picking up a plate and handing it to her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re very quiet.”

She nodded. “I’m okay. Just didn’t sleep very well.”

He frowned but didn’t comment, turning to answer a question from a woman standing beside him in the line. She helped herself to some pancakes and bacon and eggs and went to sit down at one of the tables. Clark followed her after a minute or so.

“Hey, mind if we join you?”

She looked up to see the woman who had been at the buffet, along with a man who she assumed was her partner.

“Not at all,” Clark said. 

She studied them. The woman appeared to be a brunette but somehow it didn’t seem to suit her colouring. The style was long and straight but looked almost artificial. Her face was bare of make-up but she was reasonably attractive. 

The man was a little shorter than her and probably a couple of years younger. Not that that mattered, she thought. He had dark blond hair and a husky voice. 

“So, this is a nice place,” the man said. 

She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t want to live here. Being so out of the way and all, but it’s pretty.”

“Great place to get away from it all,” the woman returned. “Oh. I’m Dinah. This is Bart.”

She remained silent as Clark introduced them. She had the oddest feeling she knew the man from somewhere but just couldn’t place him. He kept shooting her odd looks which was puzzling. 

She had barely eaten her breakfast but she noticed Bart had almost emptied his plate already. The man certainly ate fast. 

“Honey, you might want to slow down, or you’ll get indigestion,” Dinah said. She moved in her chair, almost as if she was kicking her partner under the table. 

“Oh, sorry.”

She tried to concentrate on her breakfast but while the couple attempted to make conversation it seemed oddly strained. Their body language didn’t seem to match the image they were trying to portray - that of a couple enjoying a weekend getaway. 

She excused herself from the table to help herself to some more coffee but couldn’t help looking back and noticing Clark exchanging quiet words with them. He didn’t look happy at seeing them, which also seemed strange. Almost as if he knew them. 

Clark didn’t say anything to her as they went back up to their room to dress in warm clothes for a walk along one of the trails. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked softly. “You were very quiet at breakfast.”

She put on a smile for his benefit. “I’m fine. Really. Come on. I want to check out the trail.”

How could she tell him what she was really thinking? The revelation that she was in love with him, knowing what would happen once he discovered the truth about her, knowing that eventually she would have to leave him, was hard enough. 

It still disturbed her that such a good man could be working for someone like Lex. It just didn’t fit with what she knew about him. 

She did her best to act more animated, chatting with Clark as they walked along the trail. As much as she had hated growing up around army bases, they had lived in some beautiful places. Whenever she needed some time to herself she would hike along some of the trails surrounding the base. There was always something so peaceful about being surrounded by nature, especially in the summer when the birds were out. 

She tried to explain it to Clark as they walked. 

“It’s sort of how I used to feel on the farm,” he said. “When I was little, I would go wandering out to the furthest field and just under the trees, listening. It’s amazing what you can hear when you just sit there.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“You don’t talk about your dad much,” he said after a few minutes of walking in silence. “What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a contractor,” she said. At least, now he was, she thought. He’d retired as a general but was contracted as a military adviser for a company in California. 

“It must have been hard. Travelling around.”

“Yeah, sometimes I felt like a spare piece of luggage, but he didn’t really have much choice. I mean, he couldn’t afford to send both me and my sister off to boarding school, and well, she was more the brains of the family anyway.”

“I don’t really believe that a good grade average is a measure of intelligence,” he said. “Some people just test well.”

“That’s true,” she said. “Wow!”

As they’d been talking, the trail had taken them higher. They’d come to the highest peak where they could look out over the landscape. She saw what appeared to be a small lake a few miles away. Despite how remote it seemed, it was pretty.

“This view is amazing!” she said.

“I know.” He took her hand and pulled her over to sit on a fallen log. They sat together, awed by the beauty of their surroundings. 

Another couple came up the trail a short time later. Clark sighed.

“I guess we should head back down the trail.”

She bit her lip and looked at him with a half-smile. “Race you,” she said.

He looked at her, almost suspiciously. “What are you up to?” he asked. 

“Me? Not a thing.”

“Right. What game are we playing?”

She chuckled and traced an imaginary line on his shirt. “Well, loser has to do whatever the other one says.”

He raised his eyebrow in what could only be a sceptical expression.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?” he said.

“Aw, come on, Clarkie. Not scared are you?” He scowled at the nickname. She loved it when he acted annoyed at her teasing. 

He stood up. “Fine. But you are so going down, missy!”

She smirked at him. “Ready? Set.” Before she said the word go, she took off, running down the trail. She heard Clark running after her but it seemed like he wasn’t making much effort to catch her. Then again, the trail was a little narrow in parts and probably not as easy for him to race through as it was for her. 

As they reached the bottom and headed up the path to the house, he caught up to her. She turned and shoved him, laughing as he growled and shoved back. 

“Cheater!” he accused. 

She managed to get to the porch first but he picked her up and turned around.

“Hey! That’s cheating!” she said breathlessly.

“You cheated first,” he returned. 

She laughed and let him capture her in his arms. “So, what are you gonna do about it, Smallville?”

Clark didn’t reply. She suddenly found herself lifted in his arms. He carried her upstairs to their room. She was surprised that he wasn’t even out of breath.

“What did they feed you on that farm?” she asked incredulously as he put her down. 

“Lots of protein,” he said. 

“Protein?”

He spoke in a deep voice. “Man eat meat. Grow big and strong. Have way with woman.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re gonna have your way with me, are you?”

He laughed before scooping her up and tossing her on the bed. She began to giggle as he joined her on the bed but her giggles were quickly cut off with his kiss. 

“Oh, Clarkie!”

They lay curled together afterwards. Her body was pleasantly tired and sweaty after two rounds of lovemaking. Clark kissed her bare shoulder. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Wishing we could just stay here. Forget about the rest of the world.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know. Sadly, we do have to go back to the real world tomorrow.”

She rolled over so she could cuddle closer. She hated the idea of going back to the city, wishing they could just go somewhere else. Where he didn’t have to work for Lex and she didn’t have to complete her mission. 

“Don’t you wish we could just go somewhere, like, I don’t know, a tropical island or something.”

He snickered. “Yeah. We’d find a deserted island with palm trees and white, sandy beach and raise coconuts.”

“Our kids would look so cute in grass skirts,” she said.

“Jo …” She heard the seriousness in his tone and knew the fantasy had gone a little too far. 

She raised her head to look at him. “Clark, I … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have …”

“You think about having kids with me?” he asked.

“Sort of, I mean, I did think about it. For about a minute. I … it’s just that I … when I think about the future, all I can see is you. Even if …” She dropped her head.

“Even if what?” he asked.

She couldn’t tell him. She’d woken up in the early hours of the morning, wondering what she was going to do now that she knew exactly how she felt about him. The only thing she could come up with was to tell him the truth and then tell him to get away from Lex before everything went down. They could both go somewhere where Lex or the authorities could never find them. Even if he hated her for what she’d already done and was about to do, she could at least give him a chance to walk away. She couldn’t bear the thought of him languishing in a prison somewhere. 

“It’s nothing,” she said. 

He touched her gently, making her lift her head to look at him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Clark, I just … I can’t. I’m sorry.”

He gave a sigh of resignation and held her in a gentle embrace. “It’s okay,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. Just know that whatever it is, we can work it out.”

She wished it would be that easy, but she knew it wasn’t. 

They spent the rest of the day just exploring the grounds and had dinner that night in the inn’s bar/restaurant. 

It was late afternoon the next day by the time they returned to her apartment. Clark had taken a detour on the way through an old country town which had been another hour’s drive and they’d spent a little time exploring.

She put her keys down on the counter and turned to face him. 

“Do you want to stay, or …” He interrupted her with a kiss, lifting her onto the counter. She wrapped her arms around him, losing her train of thought as the kiss grew more passionate. 

Her stomach rumbled noisily, reminding her that it had been a few hours since they’d eaten. They had stopped at a quaint little café in the town for lunch but hadn’t had anything else on the road. 

Clark grinned as he pulled away. “Okay, I can take a hint. How about I go and get some Chinese?”

“Ooh, sounds good to me, Smallville,” she said enthusiastically. 

He picked up his jacket from the couch. “I’ll be back soon.”

She hopped off the counter and followed him to the door. “I’ll be here,” she said. She closed the door behind him, sighing. At least they could end the weekend on a good note, she thought.


	25. Chapter Twenty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark talks to Chloe.

As soon as Clark left the building he sped to Watchtower. Chloe was studying something on the monitor. Bart was sitting on one of the couches, eating pizza. There were at least three large pizza boxes beside the one in front of him. He looked up, a slice in his hands.

“Uh, hey big guy.”

Clark scowled at him. “Don’t ‘hey’ me, Bart. What’s going on?”

He had been surprised when Bart and Dinah had turned up at the bed and breakfast. He’d barely managed to hide his surprise when Dinah had appeared beside him at the buffet, before inviting herself and Bart to their table. He was fairly sure his girlfriend hadn’t bought that they were a couple having a weekend away. It had been pretty obvious from their body language. Dinah and Bart were good friends but she’d always maintained that Bart was too immature for her. Jo hadn’t said a word about it. 

He’d asked his friends what was going on when she’d gone back to the buffet table to help herself to some more coffee but they had refused to give him a straight answer. He hadn’t been happy about it, wondering if his friends were spying on him, making sure he didn’t reveal anything to Jo that the League didn’t want him to. 

Bart shrugged and stuffed the pizza slice in his mouth. It was typical, Clark thought. He had never been very good at giving straight answers. 

He’d met Bart several years ago when he’d been a senior at Smallville High. The young speedster had saved his father, Jonathan, when a driver had lost control of his truck and mounted the pavement. Bart had pushed him out of the way, but then had stolen his wallet. Clark had tracked him down with Chloe’s help and learned that his new friend had discovered his ability after being struck by lightning. 

Clark had managed to convince him to give up his life of crime after the teen had almost got himself killed. A couple of years later, he’d learned that Bart had been recruited by Oliver and was now a full-fledged member of the Justice League. 

“Sorry, Clark,” Chloe said behind him. “I asked Bart and Dinah to go.”

He turned and frowned at his friend, not realising she had come up behind him. “Why?”

“I had to confirm something.”

“About what?” he asked, genuinely confused. 

“About your girlfriend.”

“Now, wait a second. You were spying on my girlfriend?” he asked, turning to look at Bart for confirmation. The other man just shrugged. 

“Not exactly. I asked Bart and Dinah to go down to see if they could pick up anything that might be able to confirm my suspicions.”

“Which are?”

He watched as she went to the computer and began typing something on the keyboard. An image came up on the monitor. The woman looked similar to his girlfriend, except she had long, chocolate brown hair and hazel eyes and her face was a little different. Jo had blue eyes. 

“Who’s that?” he asked, wondering why he should know her name. 

“Lois Lane.”

He stared incredulously. He’d seen a photo of her from the time she’d disappeared, but it hadn’t exactly been a good quality photo. The woman in the photo on the screen had clearly been laughing, her brown eyes sparkling with humour. She almost seemed to glow. 

He’d never actually met Lois Lane. When he’d heard that Lex had had someone plant information which had been designed to destroy the Daily Planet reporter’s career, he’d gone to Bruce. His friend had told him to distance himself from it and not get involved. He’d been forced to basically watch as Lane had lost everything. Or almost everything. She’d managed to get a job at the Inquisitor but in the meantime had continued to investigate LexCorp. Finally, Lex had decided to permanently get rid of the thorn in his side and had hired someone to kill her. 

Clark had passed on the information. Again, his friends had told him not to interfere, telling him they would take care of it.

“I remember the explosion at the Talon,” he said. 

Chloe nodded. “When you told us that Lex had hired someone to kill Lois, Oliver had Bart and Victor take shifts and watch her. Then he found out that the Toyman had accepted the contract.”

He stared. “Winslow Schott?”

“Yep. The man is a genius with electronics and explosives. We found one of his hideouts after Lois disappeared and there were plans for a microwave. He turned the microwave in the apartment into a bomb.”

“That’s where I come in,” Bart said. “I was outside the Talon, watching.” He explained that he had seen the flash as the microwave exploded and had used his speed force to get Lois out of the building. 

He’d sped away to call Oliver and tell him what had happened, not wanting Lois to see him using his abilities. By the time he returned to the scene, she’d disappeared. 

It was all beginning to make sense. It had to be Lois who had been working with Stuart. She might have even been responsible for the break-in at Lex’s office the other night. That also meant that she …

“She’s Lois.”

Chloe nodded, her face sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Clark. When you told me her name was Joanne, I didn’t even think about it. Then you told me she loves maple donuts and that’s when I started to put the pieces together.”

He didn’t quite get it. What was it about the name?

“Joanne is her middle name,” his friend told him, correctly interpreting his expression. “Anyway, the donuts thing could have been a coincidence, but coupled with that …” She broke off. 

“That’s why you wanted the photo,” he said. “God, what she must have gone through.”

He probably should have been angry. She had obviously sought him out hoping to get the inside scoop on Lex, wanting to use whatever information he had to hit back at the man who had destroyed her life. Instead, he was afraid for her. If Lex were to discover who she really was, she would be in serious danger. 

“Now before you go and confront her, there are two things you need to understand. One, she thinks you’re one of the bad guys.”

“And two, she’s crazy in love with you, man,” Bart interjected.

He frowned. “What?”

Chloe quickly explained that Dinah had been observing them at breakfast the day before and had seen the way Jo, or rather Lois, had looked at him. Only another woman could see it, his friend told him. 

He realised that also explained her odd behaviour and her quietness at breakfast. She was confused by her feelings, thinking he was something he wasn’t. She might also be struggling with those feelings, knowing that if he was one of the bad guys, then he would have to go down with Lex.

“So, I should tell her the truth?” he asked. 

Chloe’s expression was deadly serious. 

“If you do, you have to tell her everything. And I do mean everything, Clark.”

He wasn’t sure he was ready to tell her about his alien heritage. Still, Chloe was right. If he had any hope of being able to have a real relationship with Jo – Lois, she needed to know the truth. 

He didn’t know what to say. He had no idea how to deal with this. On one hand, it did look very bad. Lois had clearly not been expecting to get so emotionally involved, which meant that in the beginning, she had been basically using him. He really should be angry, or hurt, but his heart was just as involved. He loved her. He had fallen deeply in love with her and all he could think was all the pain she must be going through. 

A call came through and Bart left Watchtower to attend to the call. The room was silent for a few minutes as Clark thought things through. 

“What are you going to do?” Chloe asked quietly.

“I don’t know. I keep thinking I should be mad, but …”

“But you feel bad for her. She doesn’t know who you really are.”

“And if I confront her with the truth about who she is …”

“She could run. Look, Lois and I were really close when we were young but after she got the job at the Daily Planet we just … it was like we were on different continents.” He understood what she was trying to say. She knew Lois way back when and could possibly predict what her cousin would do, but didn’t know for sure. Things had changed in the past few years. 

“Maybe she felt you would hate her for taking the job that you wanted,” Clark said gently, in his quiet way reminding her that maybe she didn’t know her cousin as well as she thought she did, especially now, and didn’t really know how Lois would react to learning the truth. 

Chloe nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Look, I can tell you what I think you should do about Lois, but ultimately it is up to you.”

“What do you think I should do?” he asked.

“Watch over her but don’t confront her. Not yet, anyway.”

He studied his friend. The truth had to come out before Lex discovered who she really was and actually succeeded in what he’d tried to do three years earlier. 

“Chloe … Maybe you should talk to her. Find out what she intends to do.”

“That’s sort of what I was thinking. Maybe we haven’t been that close in the past few years, but there’s no way she can fool me into thinking she’s someone else.”

He nodded. It was probably the best course of action for now. He glanced at his watch. He’d been gone roughly fifteen minutes. Lois would soon start wondering where he’d got to.

“I should go. I promised her I’d get some takeout.”

He left Watchtower and sped to his favourite Chinese restaurant, ordering the meal. The restaurant wasn’t busy and the cooks didn’t take long to prepare the food. He thanked the owner in Mandarin, getting a huge smile in return. The couple who owned the restaurant had been in the US about ten years and spoke English very well, but loved it when their customers spoke in their own language. 

Clark returned to Lois’ apartment, reminding himself that she didn’t know that he knew her real name. He realised he would have to be very careful what he said to her. 

He couldn’t help thinking about all the things she’d said the day before. How she wished they could just go away somewhere. Her remark about kids told him that she did see a future for them. He didn’t know if he could have children himself, but the fact that she was thinking about it spoke volumes about her feelings for him. 

He had also realised what she had been going to say when she’d stopped mid-sentence. She was afraid he was going to hate her when the truth came out. He couldn’t. She needed help. Whether she would accept that help was another matter. 

He opened the door. She was sitting at the table reading something on her laptop, but looked up and smiled when he came in. 

“Oh goody, I’m starving,” she said when he held up the bag of takeout.

They sat down to eat. For all his worries about not being able to hide anything from her, it was easier than he thought it would be to fall back into the routine of bantering back and forth as they ate. The one thing he loved about her was her way of bringing him down to Earth, so to speak. There was no pretence, no sense that she was faking. It seemed that he brought out a side to her that she never showed anyone else.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois can't hide from her fears

She woke up suddenly, her heart pounding as she sat up. For a moment she thought she was alone in the darkened room but quickly realised Clark was sleeping soundly beside her. 

She wasn’t sure what had woken her but assumed it had been another bad dream. She was no psychologist but she knew the dreams were a manifestation of all her fears. Especially for Clark. 

She lay back down and closed her eyes but her mind would not rest. She kept going over everything in her head, wondering what she was going to do about Clark. She wanted to be with him but it was never going to be possible. Not once she finished what she had to do. 

It wasn’t fair, she thought. Clark was a good man, caught up in something he never should have been. 

Then again, when she’d started this, she had no idea she would actually fall for him. All her research into him and what he did working at LexCorp hadn’t prepared her for the kind of man he actually was. 

Had they met in different circumstances, she knew things would have been a lot different. Maybe he never would have gone to work for Lex. 

She sighed and tried to relax. It was all a lot of maybes and she couldn’t really change the past. 

“What’s wrong?” Clark asked softly. 

“It’s nothing,” she responded. “Bad dream.”

“I know. You were muttering in your sleep,” he told her. 

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” she said, genuinely apologetic. “Go back to sleep.”

She felt his hand gently stroking her. “Roll over.”

“What?”

“Roll over on your stomach. You need to relax. That’s why you can’t get back to sleep. I’ve been told I do pretty good massages.”

“O-okay,” she said sceptically, doing as he instructed. He immediately began massaging her back with firm strokes. It wasn’t long before the tension began leaving her body and she felt very sleepy. “Whoever told you you’re good at giving massages was right,” she told him sleepily.

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder and spooned behind her. “Go to sleep, love,” he said. 

Comforted by his warmth and loving presence, she drifted off to sleep again. When she opened her eyes again, it was morning. She heard water running and assumed Clark was in the shower. 

She got up, wrapping a kimono robe around her, wondering if she should join him in the shower. She heard the water being turned off and opened the door. Clark was towelling himself dry. He looked around at her.

“’Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Hi,” she said, feeling a little awkward.

“I have to get into work,” he told her.

She sighed in disappointment. Since it had been a holiday weekend, she had assumed he would have had the day off. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Lex would make him work even on a holiday. 

“Really? I was hoping we could do something today. Can’t you call out?”

He shook his head, water dropping from his wet hair. “Sorry, sweetheart. It’s something to do with a security breach last week.”

She hesitated, wondering if the security breach he was talking about was her. 

“What happened?” she asked.

He grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it on, then gave her a quick kiss. 

“It’s nothing. I don’t want to bore you with the details. Maybe if I get finished early we can go to a movie or something, but this might take a few hours.”

She bit her lip as he finished dressing, then followed him out into the living room. He went to the door and paused.

“I really wish I didn’t have to go,” he said. 

She sighed and nodded. “You can’t help it.”

He kissed her again. “I’ll call you later, okay?” He seemed to hesitate, as if he was about to say something else, but left without another word. 

She closed the door behind him and leaned against the wood panel, wondering why she felt so bad. It wasn’t just the fact that he was investigating the security breach. She hoped he wouldn’t find out it was her, but one small part of her hoped he would. Then everything would be out in the open and she would know where she stood with him. 

She showered, dressed and prepared breakfast for herself before checking her messages. She’d given the flash drive to Flag, telling him to find someone to decrypt the files she’d managed to copy. He had told her to give him a few days but still hadn’t called to say the job had been completed. 

Knowing there was little else she could do until she got a look at the files, she decided to go out and get some groceries. The grocery store she usually went to was only a couple of blocks from her apartment and she often walked if she was only intending to get a few things.

She left the apartment and began walking, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her jacket. It was a cold day and the breeze coming from the south was bitter. Winter was definitely on the way, she thought. 

As she walked, she noticed a black saloon driving past. The driver seemed to slow as the car passed her, as if they were staring at her. She was used to the odd glance now and then. While she didn’t consider herself supermodel gorgeous, she knew her looks did attract attention sometimes. 

She wandered around the store, picking up various items, but not really paying any attention to what was going on around her. She was alert enough to avoid any possible collision with any other shopper but was almost in a world of her own. 

She walked back to the apartment with a paper sack in her arms. As she reached the end of her street, she stopped walking and frowned. A black saloon was parked outside her building. Unless she was mistaken, it was the same car she had seen on her way to the store. 

Just as she was about to walk up the steps to enter the building, the back door of the car opened and a man got out. She frowned. He was tall and dark-skinned and had a commanding presence. He held the door open and stared pointedly at her. It was clear he expected her to get in the car. 

Biting her lip, she moved to obey, putting her grocery sack down on the seat next to her. She quickly turned, launching an attack but he caught her wrist and forced it down.

“Do not test me, Miss Lane.” He gently pushed her into the car, keeping a firm grip on her wrist. “You are in no danger here.”

She started, unnerved by the fact that he not only knew her real name but also that he appeared to have read her mind. She remained silent, sitting in the corner of the vehicle as he closed the door. The car moved off at a reasonable speed, merging with the traffic.

She had no idea who these people were but was determined to find out. 

She continued to sit silently on the journey, glancing occasionally out the side window to see if she could recognise where they were going. She knew they were heading toward the central city. They had already passed several buildings which were on the same block as LexCorp Plaza. She assumed the man beside her didn’t work for Lex, or else she would have been dead by now. Either that or he had been instructed to find out exactly what she had on Lex. 

The car stopped and she was made to get out. She bent to grab her groceries, but the man once again grasped her wrist. 

“They will be returned to you in time,” he said. 

She frowned again, confused by the man’s statement. He couldn’t be a cop either, she thought, since it didn’t seem like she was under arrest. 

She reluctantly allowed him to guide her into the building, which she now remembered as a dome-roofed building which could have once been an observatory. It was on the far side of the central city, several blocks from the Daily Planet. For a long time it had been empty but had been taken over not long before she had been fired from the newspaper. She had no idea what kind of business was conducted within the building. 

Her escort, or whoever he was, led her to an elevator. She noticed there was a scanner and various other security measures. It sure wouldn’t be easy to break in, if she had any intentions of doing so. 

The elevator doors opened on a narrow corridor, leading to two doors. The man led her to the door at the end of the corridor, opening it and gesturing for her to enter. She did so, turning to him.

“What are you …”

She was confused to see the door closing behind her and heard footsteps walking away. She turned back to look at the room. A huge mirror covered most of one wall. She figured it had to be a one-way mirror as the wall was more than likely adjoining the room next door. 

The room she was in was sparsely furnished with a table in the centre and a chair on each side of the table. It was clearly meant to be some kind of interrogation room. 

She decided she had no option but to sit in one of the chairs. It didn’t take long for her to understand why most people quickly cracked under interrogation. The chair was a hard, wooden one and extremely uncomfortable to sit on. 

After a few minutes of her fidgeting on her seat, the door opened. She was expecting the man who had brought her here and was barely able to hide her surprise when her cousin walked in. 

“Hello, Lois.”

She didn’t dare reply, not trusting herself to not blurt out anything incriminating. 

“You don’t have to pretend,” Chloe said, dropping a folder on the table. “I have enough here to give me proof. I have to admit, it was a pretty good plan. You did your homework.”

“What plan?” she asked. 

“Well, for one, conning my old boyfriend.”

“It wasn’t … I didn’t …” She bit her lip. “It wasn’t about conning him,” she said, giving up any thought of pretence. They might not have been very close in the past few years, but Chloe still knew her fairly well. “I just needed a way into Lex’s organisation.”

“So you used my ex?”

She shook her head. “Maybe at first, I … Does he know?”

Chloe didn’t answer, her expression neutral. Lois had no idea what to think. Her cousin had obviously had some practice at a poker face. 

“We know about Stuart,” Chloe said. 

“Where is he?” she asked. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. And no, I’m not going to tell you where he is. He’s very protective of you, though. I wonder what you did to inspire such loyalty?”

She wanted to think it was the money she’d paid him but knew it wasn’t that. Or at least, not just that. Stuart was a decent guy. Even if he had been prepared to jump into the flames with her, she still felt bad that she’d let him get caught up in this. 

“What were you doing with the money?” Chloe asked.

“Using it.”

“For what? What were you planning on doing to Lex?”

“Making sure he got what he deserved,” she said bitterly. 

“Which is?”

“Prison. And probably a cellmate named Bubba. Then again, Lex just might enjoy that,” she added, screwing up her nose. 

“Do you have any idea the danger you’re in? Lex hired someone to kill you three years ago, and he very nearly succeeded.”

“Who?” she asked. 

“A man named Winslow Schott.”

“The Toyman?” she blurted, her eyes widening as she realised how much she had just given away.

“Did you ask Stuart to warn Oliver about the bomb in Queen Tower?” Chloe asked.

“Uh …”

“How do you know about the Toyman?” her cousin asked abruptly, before she could respond to the first question.

“Through a contact,” she said. “Is Oliver … No, I would have heard something by now if he wasn’t.”

“Oliver’s fine. Thanks to your timely warning we were able to take care of the bomb.”

That’s right, she thought. She’d forgotten her cousin was dating the billionaire.

“Try married, actually,” Chloe said when she mentioned it. 

She stared. “Wow! I wouldn’t have thought … I mean, congratulations.”

The door opened and a redheaded woman walked in. Chloe got up to speak to her. Lois stared at the woman, recognising her as someone who had once worked for Lex. 

“Tess Mercer?” she said. 

Tess looked at her coolly before whispering something to Chloe. She glanced at Lois then left the room. Chloe turned. Lois stared, surprised to discover that her cousin was pregnant. From the expression on the blonde’s face, she wasn’t in the mood to discuss her personal life. 

“What are you doing with Clark?” she asked.

Lois frowned at her, wondering why her cousin was so concerned about her ex. Surely if their break-up had been as bad as she’d been led to believe, they wouldn’t have spoken to each other in years. She remembered something Clark had said which had suggested maybe that wasn’t the case after all. 

“What do you mean, what am I doing with Clark? What business is it of yours?” she asked, pretending she didn’t know the connection between them.

“He happens to be my ex-boyfriend!”

“So?” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Is there a girl code I’m not aware of that says I can’t date a guy you dumped?” She looked at her cousin. “Or did he dump you? I was never really that clear on the whole situation.”

“Do you have any idea the problems you could be causing? We all thought you were dead, Lois. Now suddenly you’re back in Metropolis, dating Clark, who happens to work for the man who tried to kill you three years ago. Don’t you care that you could be putting Clark in danger as well?”

She tried to pretend she didn’t care, but the truth was, it was keeping her awake at night. The last thing she had expected was to fall for Clark but even knowing what she was risking, she couldn’t just stop. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder and if she didn’t expose Lex for the monster he was, that was exactly what she would be doing. 

“This is my business, Chloe. I can’t just walk away.”

“Even if the price is Clark’s life?” Chloe asked quietly. “Or his freedom?” She paused. “Does he even know you’re using him?”

“I’m not using him!” she replied vehemently. “Maybe in the beginning, I …”

“Lois, you can’t do what you’ve done and just walk away.”

“I don’t have a choice. Can’t you see that? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

“And what about Clark? Do you think he wants to do the same thing?”

“So what do you want me to do? Leave him?”

She couldn’t. Not now. It would hurt too much. 

“If it comes down to it, yes.”

“You don’t understand. What if you were in my place? What if you had to walk away from Oliver? Do you really think you could do that?”

“Well, Oliver and I are in a different place,” her cousin said. She sighed heavily. “Lois, I get it. I do. But you need to decide what matters more to you. Clark, or your vendetta against Lex. Because these things never end well.” 

Chloe walked out of the room, leaving her sitting in the chair. As much as she wanted to be angry at her cousin for the intervention, she couldn’t help but think there was some deep, underlying concern that the blonde was trying to hide.

She thought about it as she was driven back to her apartment. The man who had picked her up had just escorted her back to the car and ushered her in but hadn’t accompanied her for the return journey. She was left to stare out the window, trying to figure out what it was that had bothered her so much. 

Once inside her apartment, Lois put her groceries away and opened up her laptop to go through emails and check her files to see if she could understand what had just happened, but the answers weren’t forthcoming.

There was only one person, or perhaps two, she thought, who might be able to help clear up the mystery. She stood up and went to the kitchen, opening up the middle drawer and pulling out the top tray. Underneath it was a hidden compartment where she kept a cellphone and various other items she didn’t want people to find. 

She sent a text to a number, telling the owner to meet her at a location in an hour.


	27. Chapter Twenty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark is called into work on his day off

Clark was annoyed. He had wanted to spend the day with Lois, his first day off, other than weekends, in months, but no such luck. He’d been woken that morning with a phone call. Luckily his phone had been on vibrate so he had been able to pick up the call without disturbing Lois. He’d got out of bed to answer it. 

Lex had been furious, ordering him to get his ass into the office pronto. Never mind the fact that it was six in the morning, Clark thought. Then again, Lex tended to start work even before he’d had breakfast.

Reluctantly, he’d showered and changed into the clothes he’d worn the night before. Lois had been awake when he’d come out of the shower. He’d been a little worried about her after hearing her talking in her sleep. It seemed that even if she didn’t say anything about her fears, her subconscious was doing the talking for her.

He’d only mentioned the security breach to see how she would react and she had given just the tiniest flinch before closing down and pretending she knew nothing. He didn’t really know why Lex had called him in so early or what had put him in a bad mood, although logic told him it was more than likely to be about security.

After he’d left Lois’ apartment, he’d gone back to his own place to change into something suitable for the office. Lex usually had a fairly strict dress code, expecting all his employees to wear business casual. Not even the contractors were allowed to wear jeans.

He’d made it up to Lex’s office suite to find Rosalie, Lex’s secretary, almost in tears. The woman was in her late forties and usually didn’t stand nonsense from anyone. While she didn’t have children of her own, she did have nieces and nephews and they knew not to talk back to her. She was usually unflappable, so if she was on the verge of tears, Clark knew it was bad. 

He was about to talk to her to see if he could comfort her, but Lex came out of his office. 

“In!” he snapped.

Clark shot the secretary a look of sympathy and followed his boss into his office. Lex stopped in the middle of the room and turned to glare at him.

“Just what the hell is going on here, Clark?”

He frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is you didn’t tell me there was a security breach last week! It’s like I’m suddenly out of the loop when it comes to issues in my own company!” 

“I made the decision not to tell you,” Clark said. “You pay me to take care of these things!”

Lex huffed loudly. “I may pay you to take care of things but I don’t pay you to hide them from me! It’s bad enough that I had that damned reporter investigating me four years ago, then I find out millions of dollars is missing from my accounts and now somebody is breaking into my building. What are you doing about it?”

“I’m investigating,” Clark said.

“It’s not good enough, Clark! I want to know what you’re going about the agency! From what I hear it was one of their cleaning contractors!”

“No, their contractor reported her access i.d. had been stolen.”

He tried to explain what had happened but Lex wasn’t interested, ordering him to cancel the agency’s contract. He shook his head, telling his boss he shouldn’t hold the agency responsible for the theft, or the break-in, but Lex was adamant. 

It was typical of the man who didn’t tolerate any mistakes. As far as he was concerned, if one person made a mistake, the entire department should be punished for it. God forbid the man ever make any himself, Clark thought. 

Still smarting from Lex yelling at him, Clark went downstairs to the security office. Frank Belzer was at the main desk. He was Clark’s age but was morbidly obese. He’d been warned to change his diet and start exercising to get rid of the excess weight or else lose his job but clearly the threat from Lex had no effect. He had a jelly donut in his hand and was preparing to take a bite. He looked up at Clark, a guilty expression on his face.

“Where’s Mac?” Clark snapped. “Or are you too busy stuffing your face with donuts to know where your colleagues are?”

He knew it was harsh, but he was in no mood to be tactful with the man. Lex’s mood was contagious, it seemed. 

“Uh, Mac is off today,” Belzer replied. “He worked eight days straight and …”

Clark raised a hand. “I’m not interested in his schedule. What about Scott? Is he in?”

“He’s, um, doing his rounds. Mr Kent, I …”

“Don’t. I don’t want to hear it. Send Scott up to my office as soon as he’s finished his rounds. And get rid of the damn donuts. Or else you won’t have to worry about being fired. You’re a heart attack waiting to happen, Belzer!”

“Yes sir,” the man said quietly, wrapping the pastry in a napkin and dumping it in the waste basket. 

Clark went back upstairs and tried to concentrate on work, to no avail. He thought about sending a message to Chloe to warn her that Lex knew about the breach, but figured she would be busy with Lois. She hadn’t mentioned the footage when they’d talked but he was fairly sure the woman who had broken into Lex’s office was Lois. From what he remembered about her, she’d had a penchant for disguises when she’d worked as an investigative reporter for the Daily Planet as it helped her get into places she normally wouldn’t have been able to get access to.

His intercom beeped and he pressed the button.

“Yes, Rosalie?”

“Mr Scott is here to see you.”

“Thank you. Please send him in.”

He sat back, mentally preparing himself for the interview. He didn’t like Caleb Scott. The man, who was at least five years older than Clark, was arrogant and obnoxious. 

“You wanted to see me?” Scott asked, his tone supercilious. 

“You mind telling me how Lex found out about the security breach last week when I gave explicit orders to Mac not to say anything?”

“I told him,” the redhead replied, folding his arms across his chest and slouching in the doorway. He smirked, his freckled face taking on an almost devilish expression. “I decided …”

“Oh, you decided. So, you not only went over Mac’s head, you went over mine as well.”

“I thought Lex should know.”

“Well, you’re not paid to think!” Clark said harshly, hating himself for even giving into the anger bubbling beneath the surface. Why did the man always seem to bait him? “When I give an order, I expect it to be followed to the letter!”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t care about your order. You know, the only reason you got this job was because you and Lex were ‘best buds’ back in the day.”

“Are you accusing me of something, Scott?” Clark asked, glaring at the man.

“Yeah, nepotism. It’s not like you’re actually qualified!”

“I got this job because Lex trusts me!”

Scott snorted. “Yeah, sure he does. I bet it’s more like keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I read Sun Tzu. It’s one of Lex’s favourite books.”

With that, the redhead turned on his heel and left the office. Clark sat back with a frown, wondering what Scott was alluding to. He knew the Art of War was a book Lex had been given as a child. Like everything else he’d been given, his father had only done so if he found it of value in business. Lex had never even had toys unless they had some kind of educational value. 

If it was true that Lex didn’t trust him at all, then it was probably time he made a quick exit, he thought. 

He left the office a short time later. Since it was a holiday, he was supposed to have had the whole day off, so he told Lex’s secretary he was taking the rest of the day to take care of some personal errands. Lex would have to contact him to get him to come back in, but only if it was an actual emergency. 

He sped to Watchtower. Bruce was at the helm.

“Hey, Clark. Chloe got your message but she was kind of busy.”

“Yeah, I know. I figured she’d be talking to Lois today.”

His friend looked at him steadily. “You’re okay with all of this?”

“Honestly? Yes and no. I mean, I suppose I should be upset at what’s happened but I can’t help but worry about her. She might think she knows what she’s doing, but …”

Bruce nodded. “Yeah, I hear you. What else is going on?”

He told his friend about the security breach and his suspicions. The other man didn’t look surprised at Lex’s reaction.

“He always did have a temper on him. I remember when he was little, he came to Wayne Manor with his parents and threw this major tantrum because Alfred wouldn’t do what he wanted. My father told him unless he calmed down and stopped acting like a spoiled brat, he would get a spanking and be sent up to his room without any supper. Of course, this was in the days before the world went P.C. crazy. Even Alfred agreed with my father.”

Clark, who had never been spanked in his life, even when he’d had his own tantrums as a child, wasn’t sure he agreed with it. He supposed it depended on the actual nature of the spanking. 

“Were you ever spanked?”

Bruce grinned, showing even, white teeth. “Oh, you bet I was. And frequently. I was just as spoilt as Lex.” He glanced at the screen as the computer beeped and typed something on the keyboard before resuming the conversation. “I mean, I’m not talking full-on hidings, Clark. This was just a quick slap on the backside. Not enough to hurt but enough for me to stop whatever I was doing. Anyway, when Dad was scolding Lex, Lillian yelled at him for even suggesting it. Never mind the fact that I knew she’d hit the kid a couple of times herself.”

“Lillian did?” Clark asked. Lex had always talked about his mother as if she could do no wrong. 

“Trust me. Lionel was a complete bastard, but Lillian was not exactly Mother-Of-The-Year either. At best, she neglected the kid. At worst … I’m not saying that was why Lex turned out the way he did. For some people, it’s just always there. Innate, you know?”

Clark nodded. He knew the whole nature vs nurture argument and while Lex’s upbringing hadn’t helped, he had always felt there was more to it than that. 

“So, getting back to what you were saying, do you think Lex knows more than he’s telling?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I have to wonder if what Scott was saying was just sour grapes. He’s never liked me.”

“Sure, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

“How far are we into getting what we need for an indictment?” Clark asked. 

“We’re close. If we could get Lois to co-operate and give us what she has, it might help speed things along a little.”

Clark nodded. He guessed that would be his job. The question was, how would Lois take the revelation that he not only knew exactly who she was but that he wasn’t who she thought he was?

Chloe came in a few minutes later.

“How did it go?” Bruce asked, before Clark could say anything.

“I forgot just how stubborn Lois could be,” Chloe said with a sigh. “I swear, she’s like a pit bull on a pant leg.”

“So, what now?” Clark asked. 

“I don’t know. I implied that she could be putting you in danger, which isn’t an exaggeration, so I hope she’s thinking about it.”

“She could still decide to leave town again,” Bruce reminded her.

“I know. That’s why I have J’onn keeping an eye on her. Since he can shape-shift, he’s the ideal person to watch her without getting caught.” Chloe looked at Clark. “How are you feeling about all this? I know you care about her.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I mean, I’m worried, but I’m not angry at her. The thing is, I can sort of understand it from her point of view. It’s not like I’m not lying to her too.”

He knew it was time to tell her the truth. To tell her everything. She had probably thought all this time that no one was even bothering to investigate Lex. 

“I think I should tell her the truth.”

Chloe nodded. “Like I said yesterday, it is your decision. If you think that’s the best way to handle the situation.” She didn’t comment further but from the look on her face, he guessed she was still not sure it was wise.

He knew he couldn’t avoid it any longer. Lois needed to know that she wasn’t fighting this battle on her own. Telling her everything was a risk. He couldn’t see into the future and had no idea how she would react to the knowledge of his abilities, but it was a risk he knew he had to take if they were ever going to be able to move forward. 

Chloe moved on to discussing the problem of the break-in and what Clark had learned so far. He had already had Mac check Lex’s computer log to see if there had been any activity that night and it did look like someone had been using it. While the laptop was connected to the network, Lex did keep some private files secured on a separate hard drive. 

“If Lois has managed to get copies of those files, then we should see if she’ll let us see them,” Chloe said. 

“I did get a look at some of his private files but that was a year ago,” Clark told her. 

One of the files had concerned him. He knew Lex had had him investigated years ago. After he’d saved the man’s life, Lex’s suspicions had been raised when he’d learned that the roof of the Porsche he’d nearly been killed in had been ripped off. Even if the car had been going at more than sixty miles an hour when it had been driven off the Loeb Bridge, it still wouldn’t have caused that kind of damage. 

Clark remembered he hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly at the time. He’d taken the full impact when the car had hit him and been tossed into the water. By rights, he should have died. That coupled with the need to save a drowning man’s life didn’t leave room for rational thought. 

Lex had had a simulation of the accident mocked-up so he could study it, an issue which had become a bone of contention in the early years of their friendship. Clark had done his best to cover it up, but as a teenager he’d never been very good at lying. His parents had raised him not to lie – at least, not about things that weren’t potentially dangerous. 

Once he’d learned the truth about himself, he’d always thought it was a bit of a double standard where they expected him to be honest with them, yet also told him to lie about his abilities. He understood why. He’d seen enough alien movies to know Martha and Jonathan were afraid the government would take him away to be studied. That was why they were wary of Lex. Especially in the beginning. 

As far as he knew, Lex had put all that behind him once Clark had told him the partial truth. 

Bruce coughed, breaking into their conversation.

“Uh, we have a visitor.” He nodded at the monitor. 

Lois was in the vestibule, wandering around, clearly trying to figure out how to bypass the elevator security. 

Clark looked at his friends and shrugged. Chloe nodded. 

“I’ll go down,” she said. “Clark … Maybe you should wait in the other room until we know what she came here for.”

He nodded and went out. His friend didn’t have to say it but he understood anyway. They had no idea what Lois’ agenda was in coming to Watchtower. At least he could listen in.


	28. Chapter Twenty-Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois wants the truth.

Lois paced the vestibule, wondering how she could get access to the secured elevator. Having figured out exactly where the building was had been the easy part. Getting into it was the hardest.   
  
She had a few things she wanted to say. Especially to her cousin.   
 _  
Flag had been waiting for her when she got to the location she’d sent him._  
 _  
“If you’re asking about the files …” he said._  
 _  
“No, I’m not,” she interrupted before he could finish his sentence. “I figured since you had Emil following my boyfriend around, you might have some idea of what’s really going on.”_  
 _  
The grey-haired man studied her, a smirk on his face._  
 _  
“What makes you think I know anything?” he asked._  
 _  
“Don’t play games, Flag. There is something going on and I want to know what.”_  
 _  
She told him about being hauled in by Chloe but didn’t tell him everything. He didn’t need to know about her connection to her cousin or the details of the conversation._  
 _  
The former military commander sighed, his expression one of annoyance. She knew it well, having grown up facing that same expression over the breakfast table every morning. Especially when her father had been annoyed at something she’d done, or failed to do._  
 _  
When she’d first approached Flag, she had done careful research on the man, learning about the incident that had caused him to be dishonourable discharged from the army. He had been a hard commander who had a problem with authority. It had, more than once, caused his superiors to strip him of his rank._  
 _  
She had kept her communications with the man to a bare minimum at first, giving him orders rather than requests, knowing he wouldn’t respond any other way. The man was what her father would have called an ‘army man through and through’ despite the fact that he rarely went by-the-book. While he clearly didn’t like taking orders from a woman, he had done it anyway._  
 _  
“Look, all I can tell you is what I heard through the grapevine. There’s some kind of group working to take down people like your Lex Luthor. We don’t know who they are but we think they got some kind of special skills.”_  
 _  
“Skills? As in what, exactly?”_  
 _  
“Dunno, princess. Guess you’ll just have to work that out for yourself.”_  
 _  
She ignored the obvious jibe._  
 _  
“Do you know who runs the group? Are they government?”_  
 _  
“Beats the hell out of me,” Flag replied. “What I heard is they had someone in deep cover inside LexCorp.”_  
 _  
Her stomach plummeted. “Someone is working under cover?” she repeated._  
 _  
“That’s what I just said.”_  
 _  
Clark, she thought. Everything was starting to make sense. The way he seemed so different out of work. Her inability to reconcile the man she had fallen in love with and the man she had studied from afar._  
 _  
“You know something?” Flag asked._  
 _  
“No,” she responded, too quickly to be plausible._  
 _  
He huffed. “Fine. Guess you got what you were looking for.”_  
 _  
As he turned to go, she called out. “I need those files, Flag.”_  
 __  
“You’ll get them when I’m ready,” he returned.  
  
“Lois?”  
  
She turned and looked at Chloe, not having heard the elevator.   
  
“We need to talk,” she said abruptly.   
  
Her cousin nodded. “Yeah, I figured that’s why you came down here. Come on.”  
  
She followed the blonde into the elevator car and waited while it ascended. She noted Chloe had pushed the button for the very top of the building instead of the floor she’d been taken to earlier.   
  
The elevator door opened, revealing a dark corridor. Chloe pushed open double doors, revealing a huge room with computer equipment everywhere.   
  
“What is this place?” Lois asked.  
  
“It’s called Watchtower,” a man’s voice said. She blinked, recognising the man.  
  
“Bruce Wayne?”  
  
“Lois Lane,” he said coolly.   
  
She spun around, studying the various monitors, tempted to examine them up close. Her cousin moved to intercept her before she could check out what was on one of the screens.  
  
“All right, Lois. You have the floor.”  
  
“What are you doing here, Chlo? I mean, really, what is this place? Is it some kind of nerve centre for your undercover operation?”  
  
Chloe chewed on her lower lip as she stared at her. “Now where did you pick up that little gem?”  
  
“I have friends in low places.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m sure. What are you planning on doing with that information?”  
  
“I guess that depends. Just answer me one question. Is Clark working for you or is he working for Lex?”  
  
“What makes you think he’s working for us?” her cousin asked.  
  
“Well, one, he said something the other day that implied that he had been talking to you since you two supposedly broke up. And two, when you were talking to me today, I got the sense you were worried about Clark. Like I said, you two supposedly broke up. Acrimoniously, is what I heard. You wouldn’t be that concerned about him if you hated him.”  
  
“I knew you were fairly astute, Lois, but that’s pretty smart thinking.”  
  
She turned and looked at Clark, who had obviously been listening from somewhere else.   
  
“So you know,” she said, sighing. He nodded.   
  
“Chloe figured it out and told me before she talked to you. Lois …”  
  
“No, don’t. I can’t,” she said, pulling away before he could reach for her. He looked worried.   
  
“Lois …”  
  
“No. Please don’t, Clark. I know you must hate me for what I did, but I …”  
  
He grasped her by the shoulders, gently turning her toward him. “No, Lois, I don’t hate you. I’m worried, and concerned, but …”  
  
“Why?” she said, wailing. “After everything I …”  
  
She couldn’t understand it. He should be angry. He should hate her for the way she’d used him.   
  
“Lois, I think we need to talk. Somewhere more private.”  
  
She looked up and realised her cousin and Bruce were watching them. “I …”  
  
“Do you trust me?” Clark asked quietly.   
  
She chewed on her bottom lip, then nodded slowly. “Yes. I trust you.” More than she had ever trusted anyone.  
  
“Then take my hand,” he said. “Come with me.”  
  
“Where?” she asked softly, putting her hand in his.   
  
Suddenly it was as if she’d been caught up in a whirlwind. She could feel Clark’s arms around her and some kind of movement but was forced to close her eyes, her mind reeling as things seemed to pass in a blur.   
  
“Lois, open your eyes.”  
  
She opened them, blinking to adjust to the light. She looked around. They were in a house of some kind. She could see a range behind Clark. It reminded her of one of those coal ranges she’d seen in a museum.  
  
“Is this your farm?” she asked. When they’d gone horse-riding, he’d taken her over the fields but had never actually shown her the farmhouse.   
  
He nodded. “This is where I grew up.”  
  
She stared at him. “How did we get here? I mean, we were in Metropolis and now we’re in Smallville. How did we get here in …” She glanced at the clock on the wall. Less than five minutes had passed since she’d gone to Watchtower. Smallville was at least an hour away by car from the city.   
  
“Lois, come and sit down,” Clark said, taking her hand and guiding her through a door into what she assumed was the family room. “There are a few things you need to know about me.”  
  
She sat beside him on the couch. Clark obviously hadn’t been in the house a while as a small dust cloud rose from the cushions.   
  
“You’re right, Lois. I’ve been working undercover at LexCorp for the past five years. We’ve been trying to get evidence on Lex.”  
  
“Evidence? Like what he’s been doing to people exposed to the meteors? That kind of evidence?”  
  
“That and several incidences of suspect business practices. Blackmail.”  
  
She nodded. “Why you?”  
  
“Because Lex and I were friends a long time ago. The League thought I could use that friendship as a way in.”  
  
“Yeah, I understand that, but … What happened just now?” She figured he had to have some kind of ability. She wondered if it was the same as Emil LaSalle’s. “Are you a teleporter?”  
  
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s a little bit more complicated than that.”  
  
“How complicated can it get?”  
  
She listened as he told her exactly what abilities he had and what they were used for. She was stunned. Clark had not only the ability to super speed, but he could fly. He was also ten times as strong as the average man.  
  
“Wow! You got the mother-lode, didn’t you?” she said.   
  
If she was honest with herself, she didn’t really know how she should feel about his abilities. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. Here was a man who had enough strength to crush her, if he so chose.   
  
“Lois, I didn’t get my abilities from the meteors.”  
  
She stared at him, confused. If he didn’t get them from the meteors, then how …? She knew some people got their abilities by other means but it seemed odd that he had grown up in Smallville, the location of the biggest meteor strike ever to have hit Earth, and it just seemed more logical for him to have got those abilities from the meteors.  
  
“What? What do you mean?”  
  
“I wasn’t born on Earth. In fact, I wasn’t born anywhere near this galaxy.” He spoke it so matter-of-factly it was as if he’d rehearsed it.   
  
He slowly explained to her about a planet called Krypton and what had happened to it.   
  
She felt weird. Her head swam, overwhelmed with hearing so much in so little time. How could she have not noticed that the man she’d fallen in love with was so different?   
A laugh bubbled up from inside. Technically, Clark wasn’t even a man.  
  
“Lois? Are you okay?”  
  
“You’re … you’re an alien?” she asked. “Like, E.T?”  
  
“Actually, I prefer the term intergalactic traveller,” he said, gazing at her.   
  
God, she hated it when he used the puppy dog eyes on her. His blue eyes looked almost mournful. She almost expected him to start whimpering at any moment.   
  
“Take me back,” she said.   
  
“Lois …”  
  
“Please, just take me back h … to my apartment.”  
  
He nodded, telling her to hold onto him. She closed her eyes as he sped them back to Metropolis, leaving her on the doorstep of her apartment.   
  
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked as he took her keys from her bag and opened her door.  
  
She shook her head. “I need to be alone for a bit,” He was giving her the look again and she turned away from him. “I’m sorry. You just … it’s a lot to take in. I just need time to process it, okay?”  
  
She could sense him hesitating, taking a step toward her but she refused to look at him, knowing if she saw his face one more time it would break her resolve.   
  
She heard him sigh in resignation and walk to the door.  
  
“Call me if you need me,” he said.   
  
She remained still, waiting for the sound of the door closing behind him. Lois lifted a trembling hand to her face, rubbing her eyes. She wore contact lenses to change her hazel eyes to a different colour but they could be so uncomfortable at times.   
  
When Flag had told her, she had never imagined, beyond her wildest dreams, that the truth could be like this. She understood why Chloe and the others had chosen him for the operation. He could get close to Lex, and he could take care of himself.   
  
But, God, what a way to find out, she thought.   
  
She knew why he’d done it. He’d laid everything out on the line for her, no holds barred, so she would trust him, even at the risk of her possibly betraying him. There was no way she would. She cared too much about him for that. She just couldn’t get her head around the fact that he was an al … intergalactic traveller.   
  
“What am I going to do?” she asked aloud.   
  
She couldn’t leave town. She owed it to herself to see this thing through. Then again, since Clark and his friends were already on the case … Could she really just walk away, knowing what she knew? It wasn’t just Clark’s revelation, which was big in itself, it was everything she’d done in the past few years. Even if they had enough evidence for an indictment, she couldn’t go back to her old life.   
  
Lois sighed. Time, she thought. That was what she needed. 


	29. Chapter Twenty-Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark is angry

Clark was angry. Not at Lois, but at himself. 

“You’re an idiot!” he told himself. He never should have blurted things out the way he did. No wonder she was upset. 

Then again, was there ever really a gentle way to tell her the truth?

“Who’s an idiot?” Oliver asked. 

He’d returned to Watchtower after leaving Lois’ apartment, hoping to get his friend’s perspective on what had happened, but she had been out getting dinner. Oliver had finished his meetings for the day at his office and had gone with her. 

“What happened?” Chloe asked.

“I took her to the farm and told her everything.”

“Everything?” Oliver said, raising an eyebrow. “You mean the whole powers, Krypton …”

He nodded and sighed miserably.

“I take it from the look on your face she didn’t take it well,” Chloe said sympathetically.

“That would be an understatement,” he replied. 

“Well, I have to admit, when you first told me, I found it pretty overwhelming too. And we’d been dating for two years by then. Clark, I could tell you that you were wrong to tell her the way you did, but I don’t think there really is any right way to tell her. Did she say anything?”

“Just that she needed time to process it,” he said.

“Well, that’s not a negative thing. I mean, she hasn’t come out and said she never wants to see you again, so that’s a good thing.”

He realised Chloe was right. Lois hadn’t pushed him completely out of her life, so there was hope at least. 

“You just have to give her time,” his friend said quietly. 

“You’re right.”

“So, what else is going on?” Oliver asked.

“Nothing. Lex is still negotiating the deal with that guy in Gotham. On paper, it all looks totally legit …”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’,” Oliver interjected.

“Well, we know from our files that the guy has worked with the Moroni crime family,” Chloe told her husband. “It certainly looks to me like Lex is trying to get a foothold in Gotham.”

Clark nodded. He bit his lip. Before he’d learned the truth about Lois, he’d arranged for her to have a meeting with Lex. Now that he knew she was determined to take Lex down, he worried about her meeting with him. 

“What is it?” his friend asked.

“Lois is supposed to be meeting with Lex tomorrow to talk about some PR. I set it up before the weekend. Now I’m not so sure she should be meeting with him.”

The blonde nodded. “Hmm, yeah, I can see how that would cause a problem. She’s not likely to listen to you, either. Especially now. Do you want me to talk to her?”

He sighed. “I don’t think she’s going to listen to you, either.”

“Then maybe we should get Bruce to go,” Oliver suggested. His wife nodded.

“That’s a good idea, hon.”

Knowing there was little else he could do that night, Clark headed home. As he headed to the subway to take the train to his apartment, he spotted a familiar face. It was odd. He’d been seeing the same person for weeks but every time he caught the man’s gaze, the other man would avert his eyes. 

Just like every other time the man realised he’d been spotted, he turned away and began heading in a different direction. Clark frowned. The behaviour was suspicious enough to be worrying. 

He did an about-face and began walking in the same direction the other man had walked off in. He decided to memorise the man’s appearance, in case Chloe asked for the information. The man had dark blond hair and fair skin. He was a few inches shorter than Clark, from what he had been able to see, although still reasonably tall enough that he could be picked from a crowd. 

Clark walked quickly but it soon became apparent that the other man realised Clark was following him as he seemed to pick up his pace. There were too many people on the sidewalk so Clark couldn’t use his superspeed. He still walked a little faster and was almost closing in on the man when his quarry turned down an alleyway. Clark followed him down only to reach a dead end. The man was gone. 

He tried x-raying the surrounding buildings but couldn’t see any human forms. The man had basically vanished into thin air. 

There was nothing he could do. He had no idea who the man was or what he was capable of. He had some kind of ability, Clark thought, or else he wouldn’t have been able to just disappear as he had. 

He returned to his apartment. There had been no calls and Lois hadn’t sent him any messages. Text or otherwise. He knew there was no point in worrying. He needed to give her space and a little time to come to terms with everything. 

He went to bed late that night and after a couple of hours tossing and turning he dressed again and went out walking. He found himself walking the same area he’d met Lois when she’d gone out running one morning. 

As he approached the park, he heard the sound of voices. From what he could tell, there were at least three male voices, all young sounding. And Lois, he thought, speeding up his pace. It sounded like she was in trouble. 

His fears were not unfounded. Lois was surrounded by three youths, trying in vain to fight them off. She obviously knew some martial arts but it clearly wasn’t enough to deter them. Clark ran, shouting. The trio turned. Clark saw a glint of steel in the dim light offered by the street lights above and realised one of them had a knife. 

“Clark, don’t …” Lois called. He had no idea what she was warning him against but the man with the knife slashed at him. Clark grabbed his attacker’s wrist, pushing it down hard enough to deter any further attack but not hard enough to break his arm. The man cried out in pain and swore. The other two attacked, quickly realising they couldn’t fight Clark as easily as they had Lois. 

He heard the knife clatter to the ground and released the man he’d been holding. Lois kicked the knife away. Obviously realising they weren’t going to get what they wanted, the youths took off running.

Clark stood quietly. He could barely see Lois’ face in the meagre light but he could tell she was upset.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, just wounded pride. They tried to mug me and I thought I could handle them.”

He nodded. Lois was certainly a proud woman who didn’t need anyone to fight for her. Under normal circumstances.

“Guess I bit off more than I could chew,” she said, obviously trying to make a joke of it. There was a tremor in her voice which indicated she was more shaken than she was letting on. 

“Can I walk you home?” he asked tentatively.

She appeared to hesitate but nodded. “Thanks.” 

They began walking back toward her apartment building. It was only a few hundred yards but he didn’t want to take any chances.

“So I know why I was out here,” she said. “Why were you?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess that’s because of … because of what happened.”

“It’s not just that,” he replied. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you the way I did. I probably overwhelmed you.”

“Yeah, but I kind of understand why you did. I mean, it’s like, you know, taking off a band-aid. Sometimes you just have to rip it off.”

He winced. That wasn’t quite the analogy he would have gone for. It implied that his revelation had been painful for her. 

Lois must have realised how it sounded. “I don’t mean that it was painful, Clark. It was just … well, I kind of think if you’d told me gradually it would have bothered me even more. Like, you know, I’d wonder what else you were hiding. I’m not angry at you if that’s what you’re worried about. I really do need time to process it all. It’s not every day you find out your boyfriend’s a … what did you call it?”

“Intergalactic traveller,” he said with a sigh. 

As they reached the steps to the entrance to her building, he turned to look at her in the light from above. It was bright enough that he could make out her features. He frowned at the rip in her jacket. A dark stain surrounded it. 

“Lois!”

She seemed confused. “What? What is it?”

“Your jacket,” he said, pointing to the tear. “It looks like you got cut.”

She looked down to where he had indicated, pulling her arm across her chest to see it more closely. 

“Oh. I didn’t even notice.”

“Let’s get you upstairs,” he suggested, “so I can have a close look at it.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt.”

He doubted that. It had to be at least stinging. It might not be deep, but it did need cleaning, he decided, ushering her inside and up the stairs to her apartment. 

He went into the bathroom, x-raying the cupboard to look for her first aid supplies, returning within a minute or so. She frowned at him. She was still trying to take her jacket off, moving her arm stiffly. So much for it not hurting, he thought. She was trying to cover up the fact that it hurt more than she was willing to admit.

“That was quick. How did you …”

“Uh, I can see through things,” he said. “It’s sort of like an x-ray.”

She stared at him, obviously worried about what he’d just revealed. Her eyes darted toward the kitchen and he realised there was something she hid in there. 

“Lois,” he said softy. She blinked. “I don’t invade someone’s privacy like that. Not unless I think they’ve got something to hide.”

“So, you haven’t … I mean …” She sighed.

Clark was silent as he helped her take the jacket off and strip her shirt off. His initial assessment was right. The bleeding had already stopped, and the cut wasn’t deep. He cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. Lois hissed in pain. 

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s okay. It’s just stinging.”

“Yeah.” He finished cleaning and covered the cut with a bandage.

“I thought that guy was going to stab you,” she said, reminding him of when she’d called out.

“If he had, he wouldn’t have succeeded.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, sounding curious.

“I’m invulnerable. Well, my skin is. Not even bullets can get through.”

Her eyes widened. “Bullets? Really?”

“Well, mostly. I mean, it all sort of happened gradually. I got shot when I was fourteen and I just ended up with bruises.”

She was quiet as he told her what had happened with Lex and the two men who had the power of persuasion through touch. Both men had been salesmen before the meteor shower which had hidden Clark’s descent to Earth. Trapped in a car together, they had gained the power. Bob Rickman had used that power to force people to accept his deals and had built up a company involving pesticides. He’d returned to Smallville plotting to buy the Kent Farm and use the land to build a new pesticide plant. Clark, with the help of Rickman’s former partner, Kyle Tippett, had tried to stop him. Rickman had eventually used his power on Lex, who had tried to kill both Kyle and Clark when they’d planned to go to Metropolis to expose Rickman. Lex had shot at Clark with an automatic weapon. 

“Wow!” she said when he finished relating the story. “So, bullets can’t hurt you?”

“Well, not normal bullets.”

She frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there was this kid who was going around shooting people who were changed by the meteors. He found out I’m allergic to meteor rocks and made bullets out of them. I nearly died.”

“Wait! Back up a sec. You’re allergic to meteor rocks? How does that happen? I thought meteor rocks changed people.”

“Normal humans, yes,” he said patiently. “But I’m not human, remember? The meteors were actually pieces of Krypton.”

She groaned. “I think I need a drink. This is … like, wow! It’s a lot to take in.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said. “I mean, it’s all stuff I need to know, I guess. It’s just … well, just when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger, you tell me stuff like that. It’s making my head spin.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

He’d known he was taking a huge gamble in telling her the truth but he’d wanted to show her that he was willing to put it all on the line and hoped she would do the same. He knew if Lois had had any intention to betray him, she would have done so by now. She had had more than enough time. 

“Um, so, I have a question,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“When the Talon blew up, was that … was it you who got me out of there?”

He shook his head. “No. The League told me to keep my distance from you. So my friend Bart was the one who got you out of there.”

“Bart? You mean that guy we met on the weekend?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“I guess I owe him a thank you for saving my life.”

He wanted to tell her it was all part of the job, but knew it would have meant more to her than that. 

They fell silent for a few moments. Lois got up from the chair and picked up the first aid supplies. He watched as she took them into the bathroom, wondering what he should do. Should he stay or leave? 

Part of him wanted to stay. At least to make sure she was okay with everything. Another part told him he still needed to give her space. 

She returned from the bathroom, looking pale and tired. 

“I guess I should let you get some sleep,” he said, moving to the door. From the look on her face, he could tell he had made the right choice.

She nodded. “Yeah. Thank you. For understanding, I mean.”

He opened the door and looked at her. “You’ll be okay?”

She nodded again. He stepped out into the hallway. “Clark?”

He paused and looked at her. She came to the door, one hand touching his cheek as she reached up. She pressed her lips to his in a kiss that was undemanding, yet said everything neither of them could really verbalise. 

“Goodnight,” she said softly as they broke apart.

“Goodnight,” he returned.


	30. Chapter Twenty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois dreams about Clark

Lois went to bed, noting it was after one in the morning. She needed to get some sleep so she had her wits about her when she met with Lex the next day.

She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, wondering if Clark would even let her meet with the other man now that he knew the truth. 

She couldn’t help thinking about the things he’d told her. He was obviously worried she would be angry at him or upset because he wasn’t who she thought he was. That wasn’t it at all. In many ways she was relieved to learn that he had only been working for Lex as an undercover assignment. That he wasn’t a bad guy after all. 

She could even understand his tendency to be overprotective. He knew exactly the kind of man Lex was and she realised he also knew what Chrome Dome was capable of.

She had to grin to herself. Chrome Dome. She’d come up with the nickname when she’d attended her first press conference at LexCorp. The bald man had been arrogant, glaring down at the reporters from his lofty height, so to speak, as if they were bugs on the sidewalk. Most of her colleagues in the press heartily disliked the billionaire.

There had been plenty of rumours about Lex in his youth. How he had done a lot of illegal things, as mild as drinking under-age to taking drugs. Most of his teenage antics had been covered up by his father with bribery and his juvenile record had been sealed. Not that reporters hadn’t tried before to get a look at that record. 

She remembered the first time she had seen Lex up close. He’d been hosting a benefit. Of course, she had heard later that only a small percentage of the money raised had actually gone to the charity. The rest had been swallowed up in what she preferred to see as ‘creative accounting’. 

She had tried to get an interview with him, even going so far as to try to get a dance with him, but he’d ignored her in favour of a young brunette. The woman she realised would later marry him. 

Twice she’d met Lex in her other persona and twice he’d looked at her like she was a tasty meal. It had been patently obvious he didn’t care that she was dating Clark. 

The man disgusted her. Yet she needed to finish this. She would give anything to see the look on his face when he learned that the woman he’d tried to destroy had just done the same thing to him. 

She rolled over onto her side and punched her pillow, trying to find a cool spot. There was little point in worrying about a meeting that might not happen, she thought. Then again, Clark would have told her not to go. 

She fell asleep shortly after, her conscious mind finally relaxing. Her subconscious, however, wouldn’t let go of her worries. 

She dreamed she was in Clark’s arms, flying in the air. It was exhilarating. They were flying above the city, far above even the tallest building. She could look down and see the streets far below but wasn’t afraid. She felt secure with him, as if knowing he would never let anything happen to her. 

They flew past the Daily Planet, heading toward the LexCorp building when suddenly something flashed from the rooftop. Clark grunted in pain. To her horror, blood was seeping through his clothing.

“Clark!” she cried out.

With a scream, she felt his grip on her loosen and they plummeted to the ground. Just as they were about to hit the surface, she woke up. 

She sat up, her body wet with perspiration. It was a warning, she thought. It had to be.   
She got up and opened the drapes. The day was grey, with misty rain. 

“Great,” she said to herself with a sigh. A miserable day to go with the misery she was feeling. 

She went to shower and put on make-up, deciding she needed the mask for her meeting. She looked through her wardrobe, opting for a black skirt with matching fitted jacket and a crisp white shirt. The outfit wasn’t too revealing and she hoped would be enough to demonstrate to Lex that she was only there for a business meeting. Then again, this was Lex Luthor. 

She had just finished dressing when someone knocked on her door. With a frown, knowing she wasn’t expecting anyone, she went to answer it. She was surprised to see Bruce Wayne in the hallway.

“Bruce … uh, Mr Wayne?”

“Bruce is fine,” he said with a smile. He clearly wasn’t used to smiling as it looked awkward. He had a reputation as a rather taciturn man, although that appeared to have more to do with what had happened to his parents when he was young. Thomas and Martha Wayne had been gunned down in the street during what police had told the press was a mugging gone wrong. 

“Can I come in?” he asked politely.

“Uh, sure,” she said, closing the door to release the chain. “I was just about to make some coffee.”

“I’ll skip it, if you don’t mind, but you go ahead.”

She went to make herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter with the mug in her hands. She had forgotten to turn up the heating and the apartment was cold. The heat from the coffee was welcoming.

“So, what can I do for you?” she asked.

“I won’t beat about the bush,” he said. “Your cousin sent me. She’s worried about the meeting you have with Lex this morning. She would rather you didn’t keep that appointment.”

“I appreciate the honesty, Bruce, but I’m not going to miss this opportunity on Chloe’s say-so.”

“Lex is dangerous.”

“I know, but I didn’t come back to Metropolis to just step aside and let the big boys and girls have a turn. I need to do this.”

“Even if it means you could get yourself killed? Or Clark?”

Her stomach roiled and she put her cup down on the counter, noting a slight tremor as she did so. She was reminded of the dream she had had and her worry over her boyfriend. If she could still consider him her boyfriend after everything that had happened. 

Whether Bruce noticed her sudden change in demeanour or not, he didn’t comment on it. 

“I care about Clark,” she said quietly. “But you need to understand that I can’t just walk away. Not now. Not when I’m so close.”

“What are you hoping to achieve with this meeting? From what Clark’s said, it’s to do with some business acquisition. What are you planning?”

She hadn’t thought it out fully, but she hoped that Lex would hire her to write a speech for him and she could use it to force a confession out of him. In front of all her former journalism colleagues. It was not a perfect plan and she had a few kinks to work out. Least of all was how she could actually force him to say the words that would destroy his reputation once and for all. 

Not that Bruce needed to know that. 

“You know this is dangerous,” Bruce said finally. He studied her. “But you don’t need me to tell you that, do you? What do you think Clark would do if he found out you weren’t planning on coming back?”

She frowned at him. “What?”

“What were you going to do, Lois? Get your revenge and then just disappear? Or were you just expecting this to be a one-way trip? Whether you know it or not, Clark cares about you. If you do this, you will destroy him.”

“I don’t want it to come to that,” she told him. “If there was a way … if I’d known, I never would have involved him.”

“Now that you’re in love with him, you mean?”

She had no idea what he wanted from her. The man’s expression was unreadable. Did he really expect her to just walk away because of her feelings for Clark? She loved him, but she knew she couldn’t just walk away and let Lex get away with murder. In her case, almost literally. If he were to somehow discover who she really was, she would spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. She couldn’t do that to Clark. 

“Do you think this is easy for me? Knowing what he’s risking? I meant it. If I knew then what I know now, I never would have …”

“Used him? Is that what you were going to say?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Then what was it, Lois?”

“Look, maybe in the beginning, I … I never …” She paused, his earlier words coming back to her. “This wasn’t about revenge. It was about justice.”

“Call it what you like. It all looks the same to me.”

She bit her lip, taking a moment to study the man in front of her. 

“Then why do you do what you do, Bruce? Isn’t it the same thing for you? After what happened to your parents?”

“Don’t turn this around on me. I made my peace with it a long time ago. I do what I do because someone has to put these people away. That’s it. That’s where it ends.”

“And what I’m doing isn’t the same thing?”

“Not when you use a good guy like Clark. There were other ways you could have done it. You could have gone to the authorities.”

“Oh, come on. Lex owns the Metropolis Police and as for the Feds, well, obviously they already had something or else they wouldn’t have called in you guys. Besides, I tried talking to the Feds but they refused to listen.”

“Well, like you said, they already had something on Lex. They didn’t need the testimony of someone who was only looking for a big scoop.”

She glared at him. “If that’s what you think of my integrity as a journalist, then you really don’t know me at all!”

“Yeah, there’s an oxymoron if I ever heard of one. Journalist and integrity.”

She huffed. This was getting nowhere. 

She glanced at the clock and saw it was almost ten. Her meeting with Lex was scheduled for eleven. 

“I’m not going to continue arguing with you, Bruce,” she said, her tone firm as she started toward the door. “You need to go so I can prepare for my meeting with Lex.”

“I can’t change your mind, can I?” he asked. 

She opened the door and looked steadily at him, her meaning clear.

“No, you can’t. You really can’t.”

She waited until he walked out and closed the door softly behind him. 

With a sigh, she went to her laptop and opened it up, intending to check her emails. Nothing. She knew she would be asking too much for Flag to have come back to her with whatever had been in Lex’s files so soon, but she had hoped anyway. 

Less than an hour later, she walked into the lobby of LexCorp Tower and spoke to the guard on duty, telling him her name and her business. Fortunately he wasn’t the one who had been on duty the other night when she’d broken into Lex’s office. Not that the guard she’d met should have recognised her anyway, she thought. 

The beefy man nodded toward the elevator and told her to talk to Rosalie, Lex’s secretary. She walked quickly through the lobby to the bank of elevators and pressed the button for Lex’s floor. Just as the doors had almost closed, a hand slipped through the gap, pushing the doors open. It was quite a big hand, and very familiar. She looked up and smiled.

“Hi,” she said as Clark entered. She couldn’t help thinking about his hands and what they’d done on the weekend away. 

“Hi,” he returned. He stood beside her and turned to face the doors. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Yeah, I did, finally. You?”

She saw him nodding in her peripheral vision. “Yeah.” She noted him turning his head to look at her. “So, you’re meeting with Lex?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She could tell he was checking out her outfit. It was slightly more conservative than what he usually saw her in, but that was the idea, she thought. 

She didn’t want to comment on Bruce Wayne’s visit earlier, figuring he already knew about it.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “No one will think any the worse of you for walking away.”

“I can’t,” she said. She looked up toward the ceiling, hoping to remind him that there was every likelihood they were being watched. “Lex is expecting me.”

He took the hint, thankfully. “Right,” he said. 

The elevator doors opened and Clark got out, placing a hand on the edge of the door to ensure they remained open. She stepped out and followed him into the main entry of Lex’s office. 

“My office is just down the hall,” he said. “Morning Rosalie,” he added with a brilliant smile at the older woman on the desk. 

“Good morning, Clark,” she said with a grin back at him. Lois noticed there was a bunch of flowers on her desk. “Thank you for the flowers, but you really didn’t have to.”

“Yeah I did,” he replied. “What would we do without you?”

Lois found herself grinning up at him. “Quite the charmer, Mr Kent.”

He winked and nodded at her before turning back to Rosalie and introduced her. The secretary smiled at her. 

“Well, so you’re the one who has been putting the smile on Clark’s face these days.”

“That’s me,” Lois said brightly, shooting Clark a coy look. He snickered and walked away to his office with a bounce in his step. 

Rosalie laughed. “It’s so nice to see him happy,” she said. “I’ll just tell Mr Luthor you’re here.”

A few minutes later Lex came out. “I thought I’d take you for an early lunch,” he said. “Do you like sushi?”

She wasn’t a big fan of it, but she would eat it. She still felt uneasy, however. This was supposed to be a business meeting, not a date. 

Lex clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer as he guided her back to the elevator. Lex paused and turned to Rosalie.

“Tell Clark I need to see him at the end of the day,” he said brusquely.

“Yes sir,” she said, her mood immediately changed. 

Lois did not ask Lex where they were going as he took her down to a waiting limousine. She sat in the back, watching him warily. 

“So, you and Clark,” he said.

“Me and Clark.”

“I’m not surprised. I thought Clark would never move on from his ex. But you … you’re a beautiful woman. I can see the attraction.”

“Thank you,” she said, fighting the urge to squirm under his gaze. 

She had no idea if it was deliberate, but his hand brushed her knee. She praised her own foresight in choosing a skirt that was long enough to cover her knees. 

The lunch was uncomfortable. She wondered if Lex had chosen the place deliberately for its quiet atmosphere. It seemed almost too intimate. Not unlike some of the places Clark had taken her to for dinner. It was an odd place for a business lunch. 

As the conversation became increasingly ‘friendly’, it was clear that Lex wasn’t interested in a business meeting at all. He began asking her questions about Clark. Places they’d been, things they’d done together. She couldn’t understand it.

Several hours later, back at her apartment, having read the files Flag had emailed to her, she understood everything. 

She stared into space, wondering what she should do. Lex’s words from that morning came back to her. He’d told the secretary he wanted to talk to Clark in his office. 

Making her mind up, she grabbed the phone and called Clark's number. There was no answer. She called the number she’d been given for the Justice League.

“Clark’s in trouble,” she said when the voicemail picked up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of a departure from the plot, mostly to get around the idea of Clark having powers when the male protagonist in the book doesn't. It's a reversal, of sorts.


	31. Chapter Thirty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark is summoned

Clark had been busy most of the day with various tasks and hadn’t had time to talk to Lois about her meeting with Lex. He wondered what they’d talked about. His boss had returned to the office looking very pleased with himself. Clark had passed him in the hallway, on his way to the elevator and Lex had looked very smug. 

He knew Lex’s reputation with women. The man seemed to think he could just snap his fingers and they’d come running, rather like a character on an old sitcom Clark’s parents had loved. He’d seen it happen before. Lex would take an interest in a woman at a party, even if she was there with a date, and would waste no time in trying his luck with her.

Clark had no such concerns with Lois. Even before he’d known who she really was, he had very quickly come to the realisation that she didn’t like Lex. Even if she hadn’t had an insatiable need to expose him for the monster he was, Clark was certain she would have had nothing to do with his former friend. 

He still wasn’t happy about her meeting with the bald man. It wasn’t so much his concern that Lex would make a pass at her. It was what she would do to him in retaliation. Lex was not known for his even temper. While Clark had never been able to prove it, he was sure the other man had hit his ex-wife. He hadn’t been violent toward his son but Clark figured it was because Alexander was too young. The man did have some boundaries. 

So he worried that Lex might get violent toward Lois if she chose to retaliate. He would have preferred she cancel the meeting altogether but knew he couldn’t tell her what to do. It was obvious that whatever Bruce had said to her hadn’t changed her mind. 

He’d tried to warn her, even knowing there was a camera in the elevator recording their every move. It was for the same reason that he had not given in to the temptation to kiss her, or at least do something to remind her of just how good they were together. She hadn’t mentioned everything he’d said to her the evening before, or their talk later that night, but as she’d been quick to remind him, it was not exactly the best place to talk about it. 

He stopped in the building’s cafeteria to get himself a coffee, running into Rosalie as he turned away from the counter. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass her by revealing it was the older woman’s birthday in front of Lois. The secretary hadn’t even hinted at the date, but he’d overheard her talking to someone on the phone – a family member, he presumed – about going out to dinner that night with a friend. She smiled at him. 

“Goodness, I’ve barely seen you today,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

He shrugged. “You know how it is. Lex runs me ragged sometimes.”

She nodded. “I know. By the way, he wanted to see you in his office by the end of the day. He’s been in a foul mood all day. Well, except for when he went out to lunch with your girlfriend. She seems like a lovely young lady. You’re a very lucky man.”

“I certainly am,” he said, sipping his coffee as he thought about the weekend and the time they’d spent together. He couldn’t help but think just how good it had been. Maybe it wasn’t anything elaborate, but she seemed to have enjoyed it nonetheless. It was one of the things he’d learned from his parents. That he didn’t have to take the woman he loved anywhere fancy. What was more important was the time they spent together.

Rosalie sighed softly. “Oh, do I remember those heady days of young love. I swear my feet barely touched the ground when my husband and I were first going out. We would have been married twenty years this summer.” Her face took on a wistful expression.

“I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically. Her husband had died of cancer five years earlier. The couple had found early on in their marriage that they couldn’t have children. He’d told her about being adopted by his parents, but she’d never been able to afford the cost of applying. 

She shook her head. “Treasure every moment with the woman you love, Clark. Believe me, you never know what’s around the corner.”

If only it were that easy, he thought. He didn’t know if Lois would accept him for who he was. She was asking questions, which was promising, but it still didn’t give any indication of what she would eventually decide. 

He finished his coffee and got back to work, sorting out an issue in one of the research and development departments before heading back to his office to complete his work for the day. He became so absorbed in his task that he didn’t notice the time until his intercom beeped. He glanced at it and frowned, seeing it was coming from Lex’s line, not Rosalie’s.

“Yeah?”

“I told Rosalie you were to report to my office at the end of the day!” Lex snapped.

“I’ve been busy,” he returned. 

“Well, now you’re not. Get in here!”

He sighed and got up from his desk, going down the hall to Lex’s office. Feeling a sense of foreboding, he decided to use his x-ray vision to check out the room. Lex was sitting at his desk as if nothing was wrong, but Caleb Scott was also in the room, sitting on one of the leather couches. It all looked very informal and almost relaxed, which didn’t make sense, considering Lex’s tone when he’d summoned him.

Clark thrust open the double doors.

“Lex, what is it?”

He glanced in the corner, pretending to react as if he was only just seeing Scott for the first time. “What’s he doing here?”

“I’ve been interviewing him for a promotion,” Lex told him tersely. 

“A promotion? To what?”

“Your position.”

Clark stared at his former friend, wondering what that meant. 

“My position? What are you talking about?”

“He’ll be your replacement.”

“So … what? You’re firing me?” Clark said. “For what?”

Lex got up from the chair and moved around the desk. Clark began to feel an odd sensation. Light-headedness, coupled with a churning in his stomach. Almost the same sort of reaction he felt around Kryptonite. He looked around frantically for the source, swallowing hard. 

As the other man approached him, he wondered if Lex had somehow managed to conceal some meteor rock on his body somewhere. Or he was wearing a ring, similar to one he’d made years ago when an accident with black K had split his body in two. 

“What’s wrong, Clark? You look pale.”

He glared at the pretence of concern in Lex’s tone. His head had begun throbbing, a headache not unlike the one he’d got the first time his x-ray vision had activated. 

“You haven’t been eating bad chilli again, have you?” Lex asked, reminding him of the excuse he’d used just a few short weeks ago. The other man laughed, the sound almost hollow. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

Clark wasn’t paying attention. His body felt like it was on fire and he could feel perspiration on his forehead. The contents of his stomach were threatening to come up again and his belly was cramping painfully. 

He turned, heading for the doors, only to be blocked by Scott. The man smirked at him, holding a large chunk of green meteor rock. 

“Oh yeah, did I forget to tell you about that?” Lex said. “I’ve been doing some experiments with it. Did you know that it creates some amazing mutagenic reactions? Of course, you do. You spent half your time fighting meteor freaks when you were in high school.”

“Lex …” He could feel shock settling in, barely able to stand upright for the violent tremors in his body. His father had had a bad flu when Clark had been in his teens and he’d been almost delirious with fever, his whole body shivering as if cold, but every time his mother would cover him with a blanket, Jonathan would shove it off, complaining he was hot. Now Clark understood how that felt. 

He had to move, but his body felt almost paralysed with pain. He tried to shove Scott out of the way but was unable to gather the strength to do so. 

“What … what are you …” He knew it was bad when he could barely speak intelligibly. 

“Did you think I didn’t know, Clark?”

He managed to turn his head to look at his former friend. Lex smirked. 

“Oh, the meteor rock? I’ve known about that for years.”

Clark frowned. If Lex had really known about the meteor rock and what it could do to Clark, then why hadn’t he …

“If you were wondering why I didn’t say anything, I decided there was a bigger advantage in letting you think I didn’t know the truth about you,” Lex replied. “No, I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about you betraying me and everything we worked for. I told you once we could rule the world together. With my brains and your brawn, we’d have been unstoppable. Imagine my surprise when I find out that you’ve been spying on me behind my back, giving information to the feds about me.”

“You …” Clark couldn’t take it anymore. It felt as if his blood was boiling. He dropped to his knees, his entire body weak. He wanted to deny everything, but he knew Lex wouldn’t believe it anyway. He tried to tell the other man that what he was doing was wrong.

“I guess that’s a matter of perspective, don’t you think? You see what I’m doing as wrong, but I see it as trying to keep the world safe from people like you. Oh, wait, you’re not exactly ‘people’ are you? How many of you are out there?” he demanded. 

Clark was beyond answering any of those questions. The radiation from the Kryptonite was slowly poisoning him. As he’d told Lois, he’d been shot before, but this … At least when he had the bullet in his body, he’d been able to pass out from the pain. Scott seemed to make a sport out of torturing him with the meteor rock, taking it just out of range enough for Clark to begin to recover before bringing it closer again. 

Bruce had once offered to help him find a way to counter the effects of the radiation, but he’d never taken him up on it. He regretted that oversight now. 

Lex chuckled evilly. “I guess we’ll never know what we could have accomplished.” He moved back to behind the desk. Clark heard the sound of a drawer being opened and the unmistakeable sound of a gun being cocked. 

Clark managed to speak through the shivering, desperately trying to get some control over the situation. 

“I’m not your enemy, Lex.”

“You never trusted me!” the other man replied, as if that justified everything Lex had done in the years since he’d given in to the darkness inside him. Clark looked up in time to see his ex-friend cocking the gun. There was an odd green glow coming from the chamber and he realised it was loaded with Kryptonite bullets. 

“Remember that kid, Van? How he tried to kill both of us? He tried to tell the police how to kill you, but no one would listen. It got him locked up in Belle Reve, remember that? Well, I listened, Clark. I listened and I learned.”

Van McNulty had been angry because a girl affected by the meteors had been able to shapeshift. Tina had used Whitney Fordman, Lana’s old boyfriend’s identity, thinking she could somehow convince Lana into being with her. McNulty’s father had been in the marines and had been sent to Smallville to talk to Whitney’s mother, to tell her that her son had died. Tina had killed the marine.

Out of revenge for his father’s death, Van had targeted others affected by meteor rock, including Lex. Clark had gone after him, only for the other boy to learn that Clark was allergic to the green rock. He’d used it to his advantage, making bullets out of the meteor fragments and had shot Clark. 

When Clark had recovered, he had gone after Van who had been arrested and sent to Belle Reve. 

Several months later, Lex’s father had drugged his son and had him committed to Belle Reve. Clark figured that was where Lex had learned about the meteor rock from Van McNulty. 

He tried to make a last-ditch effort to fight off the effects of the meteor rock but he was too weak. He closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. 

“Drop the gun, Lex!”

For a moment he had thought he had imagined the voice. A voice of an angel!

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” Lex said. “You told your little girlfriend everything?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he heard Lois say. “I would have found out eventually. Since I broke into your files. I saw the dossier you have on Clark. Everything.”

“Well, aren’t we enterprising?” Lex commented. 

Lois turned to Scott. “Throw the meteor rock over here.” The man appeared to hesitate and she screamed at him. Clark looked up and saw she was armed with a handgun. “Now!”

Scott threw the rock. It wasn’t a hard throw, but it was enough for Clark to feel the toxic effects almost immediately dissipating. 

“Are you okay?” she asked, looking at him with concern. 

He nodded, turning back to Lex.

“Who the hell are you?” Lex said, looking at Lois. 

“Who do you think I am?” she returned. “I’m the woman whose life you tried to destroy. You sent the Toyman to kill me three years ago.”

Clark could see from the bald man’s expression that he understood immediately. 

“Lois Lane!”

“I’m surprised you even know my name,” she retorted.

She kicked the meteor rock away. While she was distracted, Scott tried to tackle her to get the gun away from her. Clark moved to intercept the security man. At the same time, Lex aimed and shot at Lois. 

Clark heard her scream as the bullet entered his back. He felt the burning pain of the meteor rock as the poison entered his bloodstream. He reached for her blindly, his vision blurring from the horrific pain. Still weak from the earlier exposure, he felt like a rag doll he’d once played with as a small child. He fell to the floor, barely aware of movement around him. All he could see and hear was Lois as she bent down.

“No! Clark, don’t you leave me! Hang on, baby, please!” He could hear the panic in her voice and tried to lift his arm to reassure her, but it was too heavy. She was crying. 

“Clark … Clark, no! Don’t … Don’t you dare, Smallville!”

He gave in to the darkness and let it take him down into oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I will say is that there is a role reversal from the situation in the book.


	32. Chapter Thirty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois faces Lex.

Lois had decided she couldn’t wait for Chloe to get back to her. Especially since she’d heard Lex that very morning ordering his secretary to inform Clark to see him by the end of the day. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she didn’t think so, not after what she’d seen in the files.  
  
Lex not only knew meteor rock could kill Clark, he also knew her boyfriend was working for the government. He clearly didn’t know everything, since there had been no mention of the Justice League, but obviously enough to concern him. The revelation had been a recent development. How it had happened she wasn’t sure, but she wondered if Flag’s friend Emil LaSalle had had something to do with it. He had said that the teleporter had been following Clark.   
  
She had quickly changed her clothes, putting on a black jumpsuit. It had deep pockets which she could use to conceal a gun. As much as she knew Clark could take care of himself, she figured why risk it.   
  
As she headed downstairs to get her car out of the underground parking, her phone rang.   
  
“Lois!”  
  
“Chloe, I know what you’re going to say.”  
  
“I don’t think you do. I know about the files. Rick Flag sent them to me at I’m guessing the same time he sent them to you.”  
  
“How do you know Flag?” she asked.   
  
“I don’t. But I had someone follow you yesterday when you met with him. He confronted Flag. That man is a real piece of work.”  
  
“Get to the point, Chlo. If Clark’s in trouble …”  
  
“Let us handle it.”  
  
“Hell no. I can’t stand by and watch as Lex hurts the man I …”  
  
“The man you what, Lois? The man you love? Even after everything he’s told you?”  
  
She bit her lip. Maybe she still wasn’t sure if they could really have a relationship after everything he’d revealed to her. Maybe technically he wasn’t really a man, but she knew what she felt. Falling in love with him had had nothing to do with his abilities or the fact that he came from another planet. She’d loved him before she knew all of that, and those feelings hadn’t changed.   
  
“I do love him, Chlo. I don’t know what all that other stuff means for us, but I do know one thing. I can’t just stand by and do nothing.”  
  
Her cousin was quiet for a few moments. “All right,” she said finally. “You do what you have to do, Lo.”  
  
She ended the call and got in the SUV, burning rubber as she left the parking garage. She drove out into traffic, barely managing to avoid a car coming along the street. The driver beeped his horn and gestured angrily but she didn’t care, pressing pedal to the metal to get to the building.   
  
The guard in the lobby tried to bar her way into the building, telling her the offices were closed.  
  
“I don’t give a damn if they’re closed,” she said, quickly making sure they were out of range of the surveillance cameras before pulling out her gun. “Now you get me up to Lex Luthor’s office and double-time it.”  
  
The guard looked from her angry face to the gun in her hand, his glance shifting uneasily to the front desk. This time of night there was no one else on the desk.  
  
“Don’t even think about it, Chief,” she told him. “Elevator! Now!”  
  
The man clearly realised he had no choice in the matter. She quickly put the gun back in her pocket and followed the man to the elevator. She watched as he pulled out his access card and swiped it. The doors to the elevator car opened and she got in, nodding for the guard to get in as well.   
  
“Miss …”  
  
“Hurry up!” she told him. He was only a few more inches taller than her but was severely overweight, so she figured he wouldn’t be fit enough to fight back should she need to defend herself. She knew enough about martial arts to be able to turn any man’s weaknesses against him.   
  
He shot her a worried look and she glared back at him, trying not to let her worry for Clark show on her face. She stared ahead as the elevator moved up the levels, counting them off and wishing it would move faster. Not that it was actually that slow.   
  
The elevator finally came to a stop and she waited impatiently for the doors to open. She pushed past the guard, who frowned at her.  
  
“What …”  
  
“Go back downstairs,” she told him. “Stay out of this.”  
  
“Miss, if you’re planning …”  
  
“Listen. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. Just go back down to the lobby and do your freaking job!”  
  
It was a safe bet he would call his security colleagues, or the police, but there was little she could do about that. He stared at her, confused. She shook her head and walked away. He would either do as he was told or not. She had other things to worry about.  
  
The double doors to Lex’s office were closed. Fortunately they weren’t soundproofed and she could hear enough of what was going on to get a picture of what was happening.  
  
 _“Remember that kid, Van? How he tried to kill both of us? He tried to tell the police how to kill you, but no one would listen. It got him locked up in Belle Reve, remember that? Well, I listened, Clark. I listened and I learned.”_  
  
She knew she had to take action. Lois shoved the doors open in time to see Lex holding a gun on Clark. Her boyfriend was just about on his knees, looking like he was going to throw up at any moment. She quickly ascertained the source of his malaise. Another man was standing over him with a sneer on his face, holding a huge chunk of green rock. It was glowing eerily.   
  
She pulled the gun out of her pocket and aimed it at Lex.  
  
“Drop the gun, Lex!”  
  
The bald man stared at her, so intent on taunting Clark that he hadn’t realised she had come in. He sneered at her.  
  
“Well, I guess that answers that question,” he said. “You told your little girlfriend everything?”  
  
She glared at him and tossed her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she told him. “I would have found out eventually. Since I broke into your files,” she added smugly. “I saw the dossier you have on Clark. Everything,” she finished, glaring at him meaningfully.  
  
Lex appeared unfazed, but she caught a flash of anger in his eyes. “Well, aren’t we enterprising?”  
  
The guard holding the rock didn’t seem to know what to do and she ordered him to throw the rock over. She hoped it would land far enough away from her boyfriend so he could recover. The man initially hesitated, but did as he was told. As he did so, his hand went to the gun at his side and she turned her handgun on him, daring him to try it. She wouldn’t kill him, but she could at least wound him.   
  
To her relief, the rock stopped glowing and Clark looked a hundred percent better than he had when she’d come in.   
  
“Are you okay?” she asked. He nodded, turning to look back at Lex, who still had the gun in his hand. She noticed her boyfriend kept his distance from the weapon and wondered if there was more meteor rock in it.  
  
Lex was staring at her, clearly trying to figure it all out.  
  
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.   
  
“Who do you think I am?” she returned. “I’m the woman whose life you tried to destroy. You sent the Toyman to kill me three years ago.”  
  
Ah, light dawns on marble head, she thought, as Chrome Dome’s expression showed him putting all the pieces together.   
  
“Lois Lane!”  
  
She glared at him. “I’m surprised you even know my name,” she responded coldly.   
  
She kicked out at the meteor rock, hoping to get it further away. The distraction was enough for the guard to launch an attack at her. Clark moved to block the man, while at the same time she heard the sound of Lex’s gun being fired. She saw her lover’s eyes widen as he was hit in the back with a bullet and she realised her earlier guess was right. Meteor rock.   
  
She screamed as Clark clutched at air and fell to the floor. The security man again tried to attack her but an arrow came flying through the air, piercing the man’s shoulder. His eyes went wide and his body was wracked with spasms as the arrow sparked. It was some kind of tazer.   
  
Lex had turned to stare in the direction of where the arrow had come from, only for another arrow to pierce his body. The ensuing electric shock had him down for the count.  
  
Lois fell to her knees beside the man she loved.   
  
“No! Clark, don’t you leave me! Hang on, baby, please!” Her voice was high with fear as she watched him growing paler. She tried lifting him so she could put pressure on the wound, her hand coming away slick with blood. Tears were coursing down her cheeks but she didn’t care. He was slipping away.   
  
“Clark … Clark, no! Don’t … Don’t you dare, Smallville!”  
  
His body went limp as he passed out. She looked up and toward Lex’s desk, hoping there was something she could use to get the meteor rock away from him. A man in green leather approached her, quickly whipping off the dark sunglasses covering his eyes.  
  
Oliver Queen! She stared at him for a moment, then mentally kicked herself. Clark could be dying and she was sitting there gaping at the man her cousin was married to.  
  
“Help me!” she said desperately. “Lex shot him. I think it’s meteor rock.”  
  
He nodded. “We need to get the bullet out.”   
  
“What about …” she asked, glancing at Lex, who was still unconscious.  
  
“Don’t worry. The police are on the way. Chloe called them right after you hung up on her.”  
  
“I didn’t hang up on her, I …” She shook her head. “Never mind that.”   
  
She tried pulling at Clark’s limp body so she could roll him over and look at the wound in his back but even unconscious he was too heavy for her. Oliver bent down to help her, managing to roll her lover on his side. A moan escaped from Clark’s lips.   
  
She ripped his shirt at the site of the wound and stared in horror.   
  
“Oliver, look!”  
  
The wound was not only bleeding profusely but there was an eerie green glow emanating from it. Green tendrils seemed to be cutting a trail through the network of veins in his body. She knew they didn’t have much time. The poison was spreading and spreading fast. If it reached his heart, he could die.   
  
“I need something. A knife.”  
  
She’d done field dressings before but had never actually had to dig a bullet out of someone’s body.  
  
“Oh God!”  
  
She looked up and saw her cousin’s horrified expression. Police officers had entered the room behind her. Lois stared at Chloe for a second, realising Clark’s identity needed to be protected at all costs.   
  
The blonde nodded. “We need to get him to a hospital,” she said aloud, although her expression suggested a hospital was the last place he would be going.   
  
Lois had no idea how they were going to get him out of there or whether it would do more harm than good.  
  
“We don’t have time,” she told Chloe in a low voice. “The meteor rock …”  
  
Her cousin nodded. She turned to one of the uniformed men and whispered something to him. What was said was unclear, but the man handed over a Swiss Army knife. It was immediately handed over to Lois.  
  
Swallowing hard, Lois steeled herself. Oliver gasped.  
  
“Lois, he’s not breathing.”  
  
“No, no, no. Clark, Clark, you gotta hang on for me baby. You hear me, Smallville? Hang on.”  
  
She grimaced as she cut some of the ragged flesh, opening up the wound a little more. Chloe had bent down to help her husband support Clark, looking a little green around the gills.   
  
She winced as she dug the blade of the knife in, trying to get to the bullet. Blood gushed out of the wound.   
  
“God, please, please.”  
  
“What’s wrong?” Oliver asked.  
  
“I can’t get to it.” She dropped the knife on the floor and dug in with her fingers, her stomach roiling with nausea. She had no idea what she was touching but it wasn’t pleasant. She continued feeling around, her finger brushing something hard. Please let that be it, she thought. Her fingers were slick with his blood but she managed to get a grip on the thing and pulled. There was little resistance as it came out. For a moment she stared at the glowing projectile, then handed it to Oliver.   
  
“Get that out of here!” she said. “Chloe, I need something to stop this bleeding.”  
  
As Oliver got up to dispose of the bullet, her cousin handed her a cloth. She pressed it to the wound, looking over Clark’s back. The tendrils of poison were still apparent. It was hard to tell whether it had stopped spreading. She glanced at Chloe, who shook her head.   
  
“He’s still not breathing.”  
  
Were they too late? Had the poison already spread to his heart?   
  
She sat back on her haunches, uncaring that there was blood on her hands, on her clothes and on the floor. All she cared about was the man lying beside her.   
  
She heard laughter and turned to glare at Lex. He had been hauled to his feet by a uniformed officer.   
  
“Well, such a shame,” the man said smugly.   
  
The officer shoved him against the wall, cuffing his hands behind his back.  
  
“Lex Luthor, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, crimes against humanity and for being a lousy human being. You have the right to remain silent.”  
  
Lois ignored the officer’s reading of the man’s Miranda rights and turned back to Clark. Chloe was still supporting him so he lay on his side. She leaned down to whisper in his ear.  
  
“Clark, come back to me. Please!”  
  
Oliver returned to her side. “They’re here,” he said.   
  
She had no idea what he meant until two men with a stretcher came in. She stood aside as they lifted Clark onto the stretcher and wheeled him out.  
  
“Where are they taking him?” Lois asked.  
  
“To Watchtower,” Chloe said softly. “We have a doctor permanently on retainer. If anyone can help Clark, he can.”  
  
“I need to go,” she said. She wanted to be by his side when he woke up. The alternative … that was something she just didn’t want to think about. If he died, she didn’t think she could go on.   
  
“Lois, you can’t …”  
  
“You don’t understand, Chlo. Lex shot at me, not Clark. He took a bullet meant for me. If he …”  
  
Her cousin nodded. “I know, but … the police will want a statement.”  
  
A blond-haired plainclothes man approached them. “I think we can leave the statement until later,” he said, obviously having heard the conversation. He handed her a card. She glanced at it. Detective Dan Turpin. “Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll make a time to give your statement.”  
  
She nodded. “Thank you.”  
  
He shrugged. “Hell, if it was my wife or kid …”  
  
She followed her cousin out of the office and back down to the lobby. The security guard who had taken her upstairs was talking to a police officer. He glanced at her and nodded, giving her a small smile.   
  
It was an agonising ride to Watchtower. She kept going over the scene in her mind, wondering if there had been something she could have done differently. If only …  
  
“Don’t, Lois,” Chloe said quietly from the driver’s seat. “You’ll just drive yourself nuts.”  
  
“If he …”  
  
Her cousin looked grieved. “Don’t say it. Please don’t.”  
  
Lois studied her. Chloe was pale, and it wasn’t just because of the infant inside her. She looked as if she was barely holding it together herself. Lois realised why. She loved him too. Maybe not as a lover, but as a friend.  
  
She reached for her cousin’s hand, squeezing it. Her own hand was still stained with blood, but neither one of them cared.   
  
It took a few more minutes before they were able to get to the top floor of Watchtower. Clark was lying on a gurney and a man with olive skin and black horn-rimmed glasses was standing over him.   
  
“Emil,” Chloe said.   
  
Lois was confused for a moment, thinking of Emil LaSalle. Her cousin approached the man, gesturing toward her. “Emil Hamilton, Lois Lane.”  
  
“Miss Lane.”  
  
“How is he?” she asked.   
  
“Well, I haven’t had that long to examine him but the wound has already closed. He’s breathing again.”  
  
Lois looked at her cousin with relief. The question remained. If he was breathing, why was he still unconscious?  
  
Emil answered that question as well. “I don’t know much about his physiology but it looks to me like his body needed to shut down, guard itself against the poison.”  
  
She nodded. That made sense.  
  
“Can I stay with him?”  
  
The doctor nodded. “Of course.”  
  
She sent him a grateful look and found a chair to sit next to her lover, placing her hand on his.  
  
“I’m here, Smallville,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”


	33. Chapter Thirty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark recovers

Clark woke feeling disoriented. When he looked up, he could see the domed ceiling of Watchtower, yet the last thing he remembered was being in Lex’s office. He lay where he was, breathing deeply as he let his body adjust. Thankfully, he was feeling no pain or dizziness so he figured the meteor rock had completely left his system. 

As his awareness grew, he began to feel a weight on his chest. He opened his eyes and looked down, tilting his head slightly so he could see. Lois. He smiled and reached out, placing a gentle hand on her head. She was so still he decided she must have fallen asleep. 

He brushed the hair where it had fallen on her face. She was half-sitting, half-laying with her cheek on his bare chest. Wait, when had his shirt come off?

“Clark?”

He looked up, hearing Chloe’s voice. He glanced at Lois but she appeared to be so deeply asleep that she didn’t stir.

“How are you feeling?” Emil Hamilton was standing beside his friend.

“I’m fine. Uh …”

“We can explain later,” Chloe said. 

Lois sucked in a breath and lifted her head. For a moment she seemed confused, then looked at him. 

“Clark?” She clutched his hand, clearly unsure of whether she should hug him or not. “Oh, God, baby, I thought I lost you!”

He shook his head. “It’ll take more than a Kryptonite bullet to keep me down,” he quipped. 

She scowled. “Don’t joke about these things.”

He sent her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry.” She was right, of course. He’d probably given her a good scare.

He still remembered being shot by Van and how his body had shut down for about an hour or so. His parents had been frantic. 

He had no idea how long he had been out this time. 

The double doors opened and Oliver came in. 

“Hope you’re all hungry,” he said. “I brought pizza.” He stopped and stared at the three of them gathered around the bed. “Clark! Man, for a while there we thought you were a goner! You should have seen Lois, though. She’s braver than I am. She got in and took that bullet out …” 

Clark tuned out his friend and looked at Lois. “You took it out?”

She nodded. “It wasn’t easy, but … I didn’t know what else to do.”  
“You saved my life,” he said. 

She shrugged as if it was nothing, but her pallor suggested it hadn’t been nothing at all. 

He got up, moving to sit on one of the couches. Lois refused to let go of his hand.

“Are you sure you should be getting up?” she asked, looking worried. “I saw what that stuff did to you.” He guessed she meant the way the poison spread through his body. He had experienced it enough to know what it did, although that probably wouldn’t reassure her.

“I’m fine,” he said. “My powers are a little weak but I’ll be back up to speed in no time. I could use some food though.” He could smell the pizza and his stomach rumbled. Oliver grinned and brought the pizza boxes over, setting them on the table in front of the couches. He handed out napkins while Chloe opened the boxes.

Clark helped himself to a slice. “So what happened after …” He didn’t want to say it, wondering if it would upset Lois. She was still clutching his hand as if she refused to let him out of her sight for a second. 

“Lex is rotting in a cell as we speak,” Chloe told him. “The Justice Department has him in their custody, which the local cops aren’t too happy about. So far, he’s been charged with conspiracy to commit murder and crimes against humanity, but they’re indicting him on several more charges including the attempt on you.”

“Flag sent us the same files he sent Lois. The one thing we could never prove was whether he had anything to do with Lionel’s death,” Oliver said.

“There’s enough on those files to convince the Justice Department to look deeper into it,” Chloe added. 

“What about LaSalle,” Lois said. “I mean, how did Lex know that Clark was working with you guys?” Clark frowned at her, wondering who she meant. She glanced at him and shook her head. They could talk about that later, was what her expression told him. 

“That’s something we’ll have to find out,” Oliver told her. “J’onn is bringing Flag in for questioning.”

She looked a little uncomfortable at that. “Uh, I don’t think you’ll be able to get anything out of him. He’s a stubborn so-and-so.”

Clark squeezed her hand. “I wouldn’t worry about that. J’onn’s a lot tougher than he looks. He’ll be able to handle Flag.”

“Have I met J’onn?” she asked, sounding curious.

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “He was the one who brought you here yesterday.”

God, had it really only been one day? Clark thought. So much had happened in the day since then that it felt like a week. 

“So he plays hardball? Why didn’t you ask him to talk to me?”

“Because it was better coming from me,” Chloe told her cousin with a snicker. “As good as J’onn is, I always had a way of getting information out of you without resorting to ‘playing hardball’ as you put it.” Lois smiled sheepishly, clearly agreeing with the other woman.

By the time all the pizza was gone, Clark was feeling more than a little tired. Lois was looking a little haggard herself. Then again, he thought, she had had quite an emotional upset that day. 

“Let’s call it a night,” he said. 

Chloe glanced at her cousin and nodded. “Yeah. It’s getting late and I’m beat.” She smiled at her husband, who had come back in after disposing of the pizza boxes. Emil had already left, saying he didn’t really need to be part of the discussion. 

Clark waited as everything was shut down. Lois stood beside him. 

“Uh, my car’s still at LexCorp,” she said. 

“I can run you back to your place,” he told her. She frowned.

“Are you sure? I mean, you just got shot.”

“I’m not back to full power, but I can still run.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She turned to hug her cousin. “Thank you,” she said.

Chloe smiled. “It’ll be okay, Lois,” Clark heard her say. “You just have to give it time.”

Clark held out a hand and told her to wrap her arms around his waist. She complied, holding him tightly. He wanted to tell her she didn’t need to, but guessed it would take her a little while to get used to his super speed.

Within seconds they were at her apartment. She took her keys out of the pocket of her jumpsuit, grimacing. 

“Ugh, I think I’m going to burn this thing. There’s blood all over it.” She blushed. “Uh, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

He shook his head. “I knew what you meant, Lois.” He took her keys from her and unlocked the door. “Uh, so I’ll see you in the morning.”

She once again clutched his hand. “Please don’t go. I …” She looked as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what message it was conveying. He had the feeling that she was afraid to show any kind of weakness. She had been through so much in the past few years, she probably wasn’t used to being so open. The fact that she was said more about her feelings for him than anything else.

“You want me to stay?” he asked. 

“I just …” She appeared to blush again. “I was so scared,” she admitted. “When I saw the way that poison was spreading. I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.”

He chewed on his lower lip and looked around. No one else was around but he decided this wasn’t something they should be discussing in the corridor.

He gently nudged her into the apartment and closed the door.

“You should go take a shower,” he said gently. “Then why don’t you come back out here. I think you’ll feel better once you’ve talked it through.”

“You probably should shower too,” she told him. “Your back’s probably still, uh …”

He guessed they hadn’t wiped away all the blood. He had managed to find a t-shirt to fit in Watchtower but his pants were sticky. 

“You’re right,” he said. 

He tried suggesting they take separate showers but she told him she wasn’t letting him out of her sight. While she had admitted it to some extent, he guessed she had been more than a little unnerved by what had happened. It had already been overwhelming learning his secret. To have his differences laid out for her in such a way was probably too much for her to handle. As well as the fact that he could have died. 

They were both too tired and overwrought for the shower to mean anything other than just washing the stain, both literal and figurative, of the events that day away. Once they’d dried off, Lois dressed in loose pants and t-shirt. Fortunately, Clark had left behind some clothes that weekend and his girlfriend had had them laundered. 

Lois poured them each a glass of whiskey. “I think we need this,” she said. She stood at the counter, looking a little uncertain. 

Clark sat on the couch. “Lois, come and sit with me.”

She still stood there, as if trying to avoid the discussion. He gazed at her until she appeared to grow uncomfortable.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I hate it when you do that.”  
“Look like what?”

“Like a puppy dog,” she said. 

“Then come and sit down. I promise, my bite is not as bad as my bark.”

“Oh, you’re funny,” she retorted. 

She seemed to be avoiding the issue. He sighed and sipped his drink, looking her over. She had put her hair up in a loose bun, tendrils of hair curling around her ears. She was fresh-faced, looking more like the Lois Lane he’d seen in the photographs. 

“You look cute like that,” he said. 

“Shut up,” she replied. 

He snickered. “Okay, dumb question, but I have to ask. How did you manage to fool me and Lex? I mean, I saw your photographs from when you were at the Planet. Your face looked different.”

She shrugged and came to sit beside him, curling her legs under her in a sort of lotus position. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I learned a bit about make-up and different contouring so it makes your face look a little thinner, or maybe more angular. I mean, you know how you sometimes see girls who have lost a lot of weight and they look so different from when they had the weight. Well, not drastically different like they had plastic surgery or anything, but … Anyway, with Lex, I figured he was just that arrogant that he wouldn’t have realised it was me.”

She looked down, her long eyelashes brushing her cheeks. She held her glass in one hand, running her finger on the other hand up and down the side. 

“Um, I’m sorry. About, well, you know.”

He frowned at her. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, when we first … I mean, I thought you were just like Lex and I couldn’t … every time we were together, you were just this really nice guy and I was so confused. I mean, I did think you were a bad guy.”

“You don’t have to apologise for that,” he said.

Maybe essentially she had set out to use him, but none of that mattered now. What mattered was how they felt. 

“Lois,” he said softly. 

“Do you know when I first realised … It was the night we … at the Bed and Breakfast. I looked at you, and I just knew.”

He understood what she was trying to say. It wasn’t remotely close to what they needed to talk about, but he let her go on.

“A couple of weeks ago … well, I guess it was about then, I met up with Rick Flag and he kept asking questions about you. It bothered me more than I thought it would, and then I realised that it was because I didn’t want anyone else to know I had feelings for you. I mean, I didn’t want him knowing things about you, because what happened between us was just … you know, us. Does that make sense?”

He supposed it did, in a random way. He was beginning to sense that Lois tended to talk in roundabout ways when she was feeling uncomfortable or upset.

“The thing is, before all this happened, I didn’t really date that much. I guess with everything that happened with my dad growing up, I just closed myself off to it. You were the first man in a very long time who got through my defences and that kind of scared me. And then I was kind of jealous of Chloe.”

“Why?” he asked. “Chloe and I …”

“I know. I mean, she and Oliver are together now and she seems really happy. Why didn’t it work out between you two?”

“What I told you was true. We did drift apart. She went off to Met U while I decided to go to Central Kansas, so I could be close to the farm. I mean, even though she knew about my powers, we just couldn’t find the time to spend together. Then one day we had lunch together between classes and we both realised that we’d stopped being a couple. There was no real blame, no fight, no animosity. And we still care about each other. Believe me, I really am happy for her and Oliver.”

“So the fight in the Talon?”

“Was staged. It was Chloe’s idea. I didn’t want to do it, but she thought it would make Lex believe I really had cut ties with everyone who had ever been against him.”

She nodded. “That makes sense. I wonder who told Lex about the Feds?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure we’ll find out.”

He leaned back against the cushions, sighing softly.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’m just a little tired. How are you feeling?”

She shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know. I mean, it still feels surreal. I remember pulling the bullet out and looking at it for just a second, wondering how something so small could be so dangerous. Then I looked at you and you weren’t breathing and I was so scared you weren’t going to come back.”

She leaned forward and put her glass down on the coffee table, then uncurled her legs and moved closer to him. Clark pulled her into his arms, letting her lay her cheek on his shoulder.

“I never want to go through anything like that again,” she said. “If I lost you, I don’t know if I could ever survive it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking Lois in a slightly different direction than the character of my book. Just FYI


	34. Chapter Thirty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois considers the future

Lois woke feeling as if she was wrapped in a warm blanket. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the blankets on her bed had been wrapped snugly around her. The other side of the bed was empty. Frowning, she pushed the blankets back and shivered. It was freezing in her bedroom.

“Your thermostat’s not working.” She looked up and realised Clark had come into the room. He was carrying a tray. From the steam rising, she guessed he’d made fresh, hot coffee. He continued on into the room and put the tray down on the nightstand before sitting on the bed. “I can look at it later.”

She shrugged and rearranged the blankets to warm herself. 

“I guess.”

“I made pancakes. I hope you like blueberries.”

She nodded. “Yeah. When I was little, my mom tried to teach me to make blueberry pancakes.” She grinned sheepishly. “She wasn’t the best cook and me … well, I was six. I couldn’t even see over the counter-top, let alone learn how to cook.”

She still remembered watching her mother make the batter. Most of it had been slopped on the counter, but her mother didn’t care. She’d sung along to the radio as she’d worked, swinging her hips and chattering happily in-between songs. It was the last happiest memory Lois had ever had of Ella Lane.

Clark must have seen her face or heard the wistfulness in her voice as he smiled sympathetically.

“You said she died. How old were you?”

“Six and a half. She got sick around summer and died around Hallowe’en. Me and my sister, Lucy, we didn’t celebrate the holiday after that. Mom used to take us trick or treating around the base but after she died …”

“The base?”

She’d forgotten about the little white lie she’d told Clark. She hadn’t given him so many details about her father’s work. Just that he’d travelled a lot. 

“The army. Dad’s a four-star general. Well, he was, before he retired. He’s a contractor for the government now.”

Clark nodded. “That’s right. I read that somewhere in the file the League had on you.”

She frowned. If the League had known so much about her and realised she was in danger, then why hadn’t they acted sooner? Why had it taken the threat of a hit out on her before they would do something?

She asked Clark that question. 

“I don’t know,” he said. She could tell by his face he was being completely honest with her. “You’d have to ask Chloe that.”

She shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t want to show their hand too soon. I guess it would make sense. I mean, if Lex found out that the League existed, and that they knew about the hit on me, he might have figured out what you were doing.”

We might never have met, she thought. Lex could have hurt him, or worse. She put down her fork, feeling suddenly a little nauseated at the thought of what Lex could have done to him. Like treat him the same way he’d treated all those affected by the meteor rock. 

Clark must have once again interpreted her expression as he took her hand and squeezed it gently as if to reassure her that he was okay. 

“I have to say I think you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would. I mean, you’d have every right to be angry at me. And the League.”

She nodded. That was true, but then again, he had just as much right to be angry at her for the things she’d done. She’d set out to use him to gain entry into Lex’s ‘inner circle’ and even the knowledge that she’d fallen for him didn’t change that. 

They’d both lied to each other. 

She ate slowly, watching as Clark ate his own pancakes. He didn’t seem to be weak in any way.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Really?” She sent him a sceptical look.

“Really, Lois. I’m okay. Full powers and everything.”

She thought about the files she had read, seeing that Lex had known everything about Clark. The man had studied the farmboy, even when he’d just been a teenager, all while carrying on a supposed friendship.

“What are you going to do about Lex? I mean, he knows everything about you. Where your powers come from and …”

“What are you thinking? That he might try to blackmail the League into dropping the charges on him by threatening to reveal the truth about me?”

She hadn’t thought that far, but from what she knew about Lex, it was a distinct possibility. It worried her that the disgraced billionaire would try to weasel out of it somehow. 

“I admit, it is a concern, but look at it this way. Lex has always worked in the pursuit of power. If he did reveal the truth about me to, for example, the media, then he becomes powerless.”

“But he can still hold it over you. He can tell the rest of the criminal fraternity.”

“It would be the same if I were any other undercover federal agent, Lois. It’s a risk we take. I knew that when Oliver and Bruce recruited me for the job.”

She looked at him, surprised. Chloe she could understand, but she had never really been quite clear on Oliver’s role in all of it. 

“Wait. Oliver recruited you? Is he running this show?”

“Technically Bruce is, but Oliver and Chloe find the talent, so-to-speak. Chloe was the one who suggested approaching me.” She hadn’t realised Bruce Wayne was the head honcho when he’d come to the apartment the day before to try to talk her out of meeting with Lex.

“So she knew about you before …”

“We were dating for a few years, Lois. I didn’t have any secrets from her.”

“Oh. So, um, what now?”

“The League will need me to wrap things up with LexCorp. I’m guessing I’ll have to stay in place within the company for a while until I can find someone to replace me in the role. There were some actual legitimate business activities in the company and I can’t exactly leave the staff in the lurch.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“I wasn’t just Lex’s right-hand man, so to speak. As far as I know, there is still an instruction in place that I would become CEO if he were incapacitated in any way.”

“I suppose being indicted would come under incapacitation,” she replied. 

“True. Anyway, I have to go and do some damage control. The Justice Department will be sending someone in to make it all look official. Interview some of the staff, I guess.”

“I should go talk to the detective,” she said. “Give him my statement.”

“Dan Turpin’s a friend of mine,” he told her. “He knows everything. Well, almost everything, I guess.”

“So he doesn’t know about your powers?”

She wondered what she was supposed to say to the detective in that case. 

“He knows enough,” Clark told her. “You won’t have to lie to cover for me. Dan will worry about that.”

She nodded. They still needed to do some serious talking about his powers and how that affected their relationship. She couldn’t lie to him. Knowing who, or rather what he was, did change things somewhat. 

She had thought a lot about their weekend away. Obviously Clark was able to control his abilities or otherwise she figured he would have hurt her when they’d made love. Come to that, he must have to control everything he did or he might punch a hole through something, or stomp through a floorboard when he was using his speed. 

“Uh, speaking of your powers,” she began.

“We’ve got plenty of time for that,” Clark said. “I know you’ve got probably a million questions, but let’s just get through today.”

She chewed on her lower lip. Where did they go from here? As much as she loved him, she was well aware that love wasn’t going to change what had happened. She’d been so young when her mother died that she hadn’t really had much experience at love. 

Clark stroked her cheek, gently pushing her hair back.

“Lois, it’ll be okay. I promise. We have a lot to work out but we will.”

“How?”

“Well, for a start, I think we both need to take some time out. Once I’ve got a few of the loose ends tied up, how would you feel about coming with me to the farm? It’s quiet and no one will bother us at the house.”

She studied him for a moment, then nodded. They could talk without interruptions, safe in the knowledge that whatever was said would remain between them. 

“All right.”

Clark grinned. “Okay. Let me get these dishes squared away and I’ll let you get dressed.”

She watched as he left the room, taking the tray with him. She dressed in a loose shirt and jeans and went out. Clark had just finished putting away the dishes. 

“Chloe called. She wants you to call her back.”

“Okay.” She didn’t quite know what to say to him and it felt a little awkward. She sighed as Clark looked at her, his brow furrowed in a slight frown. She guessed he felt the awkwardness as well.

“I have to go,” he said. “Are you going to be okay?”

If I thought I wasn’t, would you stay? she asked silently, knowing the question was moot. Clark still had to take care of a few things at LexCorp and she would feel completely selfish if she stopped him.

“I’ll be fine,” she answered. 

He took her hand and pressed a gentle kiss on her lips. “I’ll call you later,” he told her as he left. 

Lois called Detective Turpin and made the appointment to give her statement before she called her cousin. Chloe sounded a little stressed.

“Is everything okay?” she asked her cousin.

“Yeah. It’s just crazy around here. The DOJ are wanting our reports on Lex’s arrest like yesterday.” She paused. “What are you doing for lunch?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Lois replied. 

“Well, why don’t you come and have lunch with me?”

“Are you sure you’re not too busy?”

“Believe me, I’ll need the break. What time will you be free?”

“I have an appointment at eleven-thirty to give my statement to the police about last night, but that will probably only take an hour.”

“Great! There’s a little place about two blocks from the precinct. How about I meet you there at twelve-thirty? You can always text me if you’re delayed.”

“Yeah, sounds good. Thanks.”

Clark sent her a text half an hour before she was due to meet the detective, telling her he’d retrieved her car from LexCorp. She guessed she’d been lucky the car hadn’t been towed the night before but given the chaos that had ensued, police probably had more pressing matters. She drove to the precinct and sat in an interview room with the detective. 

Dan Turpin was friendly and sympathetic, obviously having realised just how traumatic the whole thing had been. The interview was over fairly quickly with the detective assuring her that he would make sure Clark’s undercover role would be protected at all costs. 

She entered the café right on twelve-thirty. Chloe was already at a table and waved her over. 

“Hi,” she greeted her cousin. 

“Right on time. How was the interview?”

“It was fine. He wasn’t too demanding. I guess he just needed my version of events.”

The waitress came over and took their orders, leaving them once again to talk quietly. 

Her cousin looked her over. “So, how are you? Really? I mean, I could tell from your face last night that you were pretty scared.”

She sighed. “Yeah, it was kind of scary,” she replied. 

Her mind went back to the image of the web of green poison spreading through Clark’s body and she once again felt dizzy and nauseous. Reliving it with the detective had been bad enough. 

Chloe put a hand on hers. “Hey, it’s okay, you know? Believe me, it was almost as hard for me last night. I thought I was going to throw up when I was watching you pull that bullet out.”

She looked at her cousin, remembering just how pale Chloe had been. Being pregnant probably didn’t help. 

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to know what you were going to do now. Are you going to stay?”

She frowned. “Stay?”

“Yes. You know. As in stick around.”

She hadn’t really given it a whole lot of thought, if she was honest with herself. She had certainly expected a different outcome than what had actually happened. Had she not fallen for Clark, she could have walked away without conscience. Everything was different now. 

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. 

“What about Clark?” her cousin asked. 

She didn’t know what to say to that. She loved him but still didn’t know where to go from here. 

“Lo, you can tell me if you think I’m interfering but there’s something you need to know about Clark.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“When he falls, he falls hard. He loves with every fibre of his being. I know how he feels about you, because I can see it in his face. But he also isn’t going to push you into something you’re not sure you’re ready for.”

Lois kept her voice low as she responded. “You mean, about his powers?”

“That, and everything else, I guess. What we do, yeah, it’s dangerous. Especially because of what Lex knows about him. He understands the risks. If that isn’t something you think you can deal with, then you can choose to walk away.”

She bit her lip. Did she want to walk away? Could she, knowing what she knew now?

“I don’t think I can walk away,” she confessed. “I love him, Chlo. It’s just …”

“Loving someone doesn’t mean the problems automatically disappear, Lo. Believe me, I know. I get scared every time Oliver goes out there, risking his own life, but then I try to put it in perspective. He has been doing what he does a long time and knows how to be safe. Besides, life in general is a risk. He could walk across the street and get hit by a car or something. I can’t spend my life worrying every second he’s out of my sight. I’ll just go nuts.” She paused and sipped from her cup of herbal tea. 

“What I’m saying is, if you really love Clark, then you have to give yourself, and him, a chance. No one’s saying it’ll be easy. But then, nothing worth it ever is.”


	35. Chapter Thirty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark takes Lois to the farm

Clark had spent half his day assuring most of the staff at LexCorp – those involved in the legitimate side of the business at least, that everything would be okay. The authorities would send someone in to audit the books and determine what to do with the company. 

Rosalie had been upset, which was natural, but it was less over her boss’ arrest and more over Clark being caught in the firing line, so to speak. When the federal investigator assigned to the case had questioned her, she had been vehement in her defence of Clark. 

Unsurprisingly, Lex had already hired an attorney and appeared confident he could bully or buy his way out of the charges. The date of his arraignment hadn’t been set but from what the agent had told him, Clark knew they already had statements and witnesses which they planned to use to oppose any appeal by the defence to release Lex on bail. 

The biggest casualty of the whole mess was Lex’s son. Alexander had been taken out of school and brought to Lex’s penthouse. The school had thought it best since the arrest had already hit the papers and the headmaster didn’t want little Alex bullied because of it.

Clark met with the nanny at the penthouse. Alexander was crying and clinging to her. 

“Hey champ,” Clark said. 

“Where’s my daddy?” Alex wailed. 

Clark bent down to the boy’s level. “I’m afraid your dad’s not going to be able to come home.”

“But why?”

“Because he did some very bad things.”

The nanny looked at him. “What’s going to happen now?” she asked. 

Clark had no opportunity to answer that as the doors were flung open and a brunette ran in, followed by Bruce. 

“Alex!”

The little redhead stared. “Momma?”

Lana Lang held out her arms. “Yes, baby, it’s me.” There was a second’s hesitation, then Alex ran to his mother. Bruce pulled Clark aside as mother and son were reunited.

“When did Lana …” he asked his friend.

“Lana’s been in Gotham. Pretty much in witness protection. Lex sent someone to kill her not long after she left him.”

Clark glanced at the woman. She had changed a lot in the years since she’d been gone. He remembered she’d always had almost waist-length black hair. Now it was cut fairly short and had been lightened somewhat. 

Bruce explained that one of the League’s agents had hired on as a teacher at Alex’s school, primarily to keep an eye on him. The nanny, also, had been brought in to protect Alex and to counter any of Lex’s efforts to demonise the boy’s mother by showing him photos and letting him talk to his mother via video communication. 

He went on to tell Clark that he’d deliberately kept Lana’s location a secret from even Clark, as well as the fact there were other undercover agents to protect all of them from exposure. 

“Isn’t it a little premature to bring Lana back?” Clark asked worriedly, thinking that Lex could still manage to get bail. 

“It was at the Attorney General’s suggestion. We’ll take Alex back to Gotham and he and his mother will be guarded around-the-clock.”

Lana approached him with Alex in her arms. “Clark, Bruce told me you’ve been running interference between Lex and Alexander. Thank you.”

“I didn’t do much, but you’re welcome.”

Alexander smiled at him. Clark had secretly given the boy sweets and other things when Lex’s back was turned, figuring the child needed to at least experience some of the joys of childhood. The other man had been raising his son in almost the same manner that Lionel had raised him. The elder Luthor had banned any toys and books that could not be used as strategy or business tools. 

It was little wonder Lex had been so cold toward his young son. 

By the time Clark finished for the day, it was getting dark. While he had no problems driving in the dark, he wanted to ensure that he got to the farm at a reasonable hour. 

Lois had packed what looked like an army duffel bag when he arrived at her apartment. 

“I wasn’t sure what to pack,” she said. “You didn’t say how long you thought we should stay.”

“It’s not a problem,” he assured her. “If you need anything I can just zip back here.”

He took the bag and led the way downstairs. Lois was quiet. She’d dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, with no make-up. She had obviously opted not to wear the blue contacts as her eyes were a lovely shade of hazel. She’d also left her hair loose. The effect was simple, but pretty. 

“Everything okay?” he asked as he pulled out into traffic.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I had lunch with Chloe and we had a long talk. You know, we kind of lost that closeness we had when we were kids but this might change things. Anyway, I did ask her about what happened three years ago and she said pretty much what I was thinking. That she didn’t want to take the risk of exposing you, but they did have that guy, Bart, watching me.”

“So you’re not angry?” he asked.

“No. I mean, Bart saved my life, She did tell me that I would have been placed in protective custody if I hadn’t chosen to disappear.”

“Would you have been okay with that?”

She looked at him with a sheepish sort of smile. “Honestly? No.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I heard that about you. Chloe did say you were kind of stubborn.”

“I get that from my dad,” she replied, chuckling. “Although he would say I got it from my mom.”

He wondered if she had contacted her father to tell him what was going on, but didn’t mention it to her. The last he’d heard, Sam Lane had used a lot of his own resources to find his daughter, but had had no luck. 

Fortunately the traffic out of the city wasn’t heavy and they made good time, arriving at the farm within about an hour and a half. Smallville was approximately an hour away from Metropolis in a straight line.

A car was parked on the gravel driveway when Clark turned in at the gate. He frowned, not recognising the vehicle. 

“Uh, it looks like someone’s already here,” Lois said unnecessarily.

“Yeah. I don’t know the car,” he told her. He glanced at her and noted she looked a little worried. 

They got out of the truck and started for the porch. The screen door opened and a woman with grey hair came out. 

“Mom?” he said. 

“Clark.” His mother came forward with her arms out, ready to hug him. He crossed the few remaining steps to meet her halfway, wrapping his arms around her. He’d always been substantially taller than her but as he embraced her it felt to him as if she was somehow even smaller than before. 

She pulled away slightly and looked him over with a mother’s gaze, full of concern for him. 

“I heard about the arrest. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” He paused and turned to look at Lois who was standing at the bottom of the steps looking uncertain. “Mom, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. This is Lois. My girlfriend.”

Lois stepped up onto the porch. His mother greeted her with a smile. 

“Hello, Lois. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“You too, Mrs Kent,” she said quietly. 

Clark followed his mother into the house, a hand behind Lois guided her ahead. As he entered, he smelt the aroma of a pot roast cooking. It seemed that Martha had anticipated the visit. 

“Chloe called me and told me you’d be coming out to the farm for a few days,” his mother explained. Clark had called his friend earlier that day to tell her where they would be. “I was already planning on coming to stay anyway so I just bumped up my timetable.”

He grinned. “That’s great, Mom.” He looked at Lois. “Why don’t you go relax in the living room,” he suggested. “Do you want a drink?”

“Um, a wine would be nice.”

Clark went back outside to get the bags, noticing that his mother had followed Lois into the living room. He returned to the house and took the bags up to his room before going back downstairs to pour them all a glass of wine. 

The two women were talking quietly as he entered with the tray. Lois looked up and smiled at him. 

“Your mom was just telling me about all the things you got up to when you were a child.”

He groaned. “Oh no. Mom, please tell me you’re not going to spill all my secrets!”

Martha smiled mischievously. “Oh, maybe only a few. Trust me, if she doesn’t run screaming, you’ll know she’s a keeper.”

Lois was giggling. “She’s got you there, Smallville.”

He found himself smiling at her. She hadn’t called him Smallville a lot lately. As much as he’d thought it kind of weird in the beginning, it did feel almost like an intimate sort of teasing from her. As if that was their special ‘thing’. 

After dinner, his mother decided to watch the television so he took Lois out to the barn and showed her the loft.

“My dad used to call this my ‘fortress of solitude’,” he told her.

The old couch he’d used to sit on, talking to Chloe, was still there. It was obvious no one had been up in the loft for years as a cloud of dust drifted up as they sat down. 

“I haven’t been back here for a while,” he said.

“Gee, I never would have guessed.”

He mock-glared at her. “Is that sarcasm, Miss Lane?” He poked her in the ribs until she squealed.

“Stop that! I’m ticklish.”

He laughed at her. “Do the crime, do the time, Lane.”

She pouted as he continued tickling her. “You are a mean man, Clark Kent!” Then she grinned mischievously. “But I know how to deal with you.”

“Oh, really?” he said, daring her with his eyes. 

“Mm-hmm,” she replied, shifting so she was basically in his lap. She linked her hands behind his neck and gazed down into his eyes. “You are in my power, Smallville.”

“Is that so?”

She lowered her lips to his and for the next few minutes they forgot everything but each other. 

Reality would soon hit and he knew they would have to deal with things sooner or later, but for the moment he just wanted to show her how much he cared about her. He knew that loving someone didn’t mean any problems they had would go away. It did, however, mean that they would be willing to work it out. 

Lois was still asleep when he went down to the kitchen early the next morning. His mother was already up cooking bacon and eggs.

“The house has been so neglected since I moved to Metropolis,” she said, without looking at him. She knew his step only too well.

“I know, Mom. I’m going to spend a few days doing some repairs.”

“And what about Lois?”

“That’s why we’re here. So we can really get to know each other, without any secrets.” He leaned on the counter, watching her as she stirred the eggs. “So, what do you think?”

“Of Lois? Honey, it’s not really my opinion that matters. It’s how you feel about her.”

“I’d still like to know what you think of her.”

“I haven’t really had much of a chance to get to know her, but there’s plenty of time for that. I’ve heard the basics from Chloe and all I can say is, she is one very brave young lady.”

“She is. I really care about her.”

She turned and gazed at him for a long moment. “I know you do, honey. Perhaps even more so than Chloe, or even Lana.”

“You never thought Lana was right for me,” he said.

He’d always felt that his mother disapproved of his feelings for the girl who had grown up in a house about a mile from theirs. Clark had long gotten over his crush on the brunette. 

“It wasn’t that, sweetie. She did have a boyfriend at the time. But I also thought she needed to be able to put the past behind her and at that age, I don’t think she was ready to do that. I didn’t think you were ready to carry that burden either. If I remember correctly, you blamed yourself for a lot of the problems caused by the meteor rocks.”

“What’s this?” Lois asked, coming into the kitchen. She frowned at him. “What does she mean, Clark?”

“The meteors came with my ship,” he told her. “I was never really sure if it was because of me, or if it was just random.”

She shook her head and looked at Martha, who nodded. 

“Okay, maybe I don’t know a lot about science, but that sounds completely illogical. Even if the meteors came with your ship, how does that make you responsible? I mean, how old were you?”

Clark had never actually been sure, since Krypton probably orbited its sun at a different rate than Earth. 

“Well, he was about three when we found him,” Martha said. “We made him about six months younger on his birth certificate just so they wouldn’t question why he wasn’t going to preschool.”

“I do know the meteors were actually pieces of radioactive debris from the exploded planet.”

“See, this is what I don’t get. I mean, how does that make you responsible for the meteors when you were just a little kid when you left Krypton.”

“Actually, I was an infant. It took about three years, give or take, for my ship to fly across the galaxy.” It was one thing he had never been able to explain. He’d been able to walk and talk – albeit in a different language – when he’d arrived on Earth. If he’d been only a few weeks old how could he have learned all that in the ship.

“My point is, you aren’t responsible for the meteors. Maybe it has something to do with the ship’s magnetic field. Or something. I don’t know. I never was really into that space opera junk.”

“No, you’re right,” Clark told her. 

When he’d talked to Jor-El about the problems with the meteors, the artificial intelligence which was his father had explained that he hadn’t compensated for the ship’s magnetic field and failed to anticipate that the ship might not have been far enough away from the planet when it blew. Clark had long since come to terms with that. 

Martha dished up breakfast and they ate at the table, chatting about various things. The subject of Lex was avoided. 

When breakfast was over, Lois got up to help clear the table. Martha looked at her.

“No, no, sweetie, you don’t need to …”

Lois smiled at her. “You cooked, Mrs Kent. The least I can do is the dishes.”

Clark grinned at his mother as she watched Lois take the dishes into the kitchen. She looked suitably impressed.

‘I like her,’ Martha mouthed. 

It had been the same with Chloe. Every time she’d stayed for dinner with him and his parents, she had offered to do the dishes, even though that was usually Clark’s chore. They hadn’t exactly approved of him getting so serious with Chloe, however. Not long after the relationship had broken up, Martha had confessed that she had felt that things hadn’t been quite right for a while. 

Clark went out to do some chores in the barn, replacing some rotten boards in the building. As he did so, he found himself reminiscing a little about all the times he’d spent there, either in the loft or working with his father on the tractor. Ol’ Betsy, as his father had been fond of calling the machine, had been even older than Clark. It was always breaking down. 

He glanced in the corner of the stables, seeing an iron loop at about knee-level on one of the door frames. That loop had once had a chain linked to it where he’d had to tie up a stray dog that had somehow found its way to the farm. Clark had discovered the dog had been part of an experiment at Luthorcorp and had been used by two boys who worked at the animal shelter as part of a scheme to rob an armoured car. 

Clark had begged his parents to let him adopt the golden retriever, which he’d named Shelby. The dog had had to be put down when it was ten after the vet had found several cancerous tumours. Clark had been heartbroken and hadn’t wanted to do it, but the vet had been kind, telling him Shelby would have been in a lot of pain. 

Lex, of course, hadn’t been sympathetic. As was typical of the man, he didn’t believe in the idea of animals being part of the family. 

“What are you thinking about?” Lois asked, coming into the barn.

He looked at her. “I was just remembering a dog I used to have. Shelby.” He explained about the dog and how it had come to live on the farm.

“I wanted a dog when I was little,” she said. “But then my parents found out I was allergic. Anyway, my dad would never have allowed it. We were always moving, so it wasn’t really practical.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.”

She leaned against the railing. “After my mom died and Lucy went to boarding school, I felt like I was being dragged around like a spare piece of luggage. I know my dad didn’t really see me that way, but I just felt like I was in the way.”

“That must have been difficult,” he said.

She sighed. “We didn’t have the best relationship when I was a teenager, that’s for sure. I guess he saw me as a troublemaker. Well, then when I had to knuckle down and focus on my studies at school, it sort of changed everything.”

Clark came over to lean beside her.

“How did he feel when you decided to become a journalist?”

She smiled. “He wasn’t exactly thrilled. I think the military and the media are sort of natural enemies. But when he saw my work and just how good I was at doing it. I think he was proud.”

“You didn’t consider joining the army yourself?” he asked.

“No, not really. And Dad didn’t push me into it, or anything.” She looked at him. “What about your dad? I mean, before you started working for the League, what were you planning to do? Were you going to stay on the farm?”

“Actually, I was studying journalism at Central Kansas,” he said. “I dropped out before my senior year, though. My dad encouraged me to pursue something other than farming. He always told me that he thought my destiny was not on this farm.”

“Who knows? If all this hadn’t happened, we might have ended up working together at the Daily Planet.”

“Oh, I can just see it now. We’d probably have been teamed up. Getting the big scoops. Kent and Lane.”

She nudged him. “Lane and Kent.” He cocked an eyebrow as he looked at her. “Seniority,” she added. 

“Seniority, my …” She silenced him with a kiss, then began walking away.

“Come on, Smallville. You’re not going to just do chores all day, are you? How about showing me what you love about this charming cow town. Chop! Chop!”

He caught up to her without even trying. “I thought you lived here for a few months.”

She shrugged. “I might have lived in that apartment above the coffee shop but I never had time to actually spend in town, considering I was always commuting.”

Well, that made sense, he supposed as they walked out of the barn. Today was the time to show her a part of his childhood. They had plenty of time for talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the penultimate chapter. There won't be an epilogue. It just felt like the right place to bring the story to a close. Let's just say they're not exactly walking off into the sunset but it's a start.


	36. Chapter Thirty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark has one more thing to show Lois.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to let them have a bit more fun and they don't really do a lot of talking about everything in the chapter, but I decided that stuff could have happened 'off-camera', so to speak. Besides, I think there wasn't so much talking that was needed but more time for Lois to get used to Clark's abilities and figure out where she fit in the grand scheme of things. This final chapter was my way of not only getting around that but also bringing it back into line with the epilogue in the book.

Lois laughed as she nudged her horse ahead of Clark’s. The best thing about riding was that he couldn’t use super speed, she thought. Which meant it was much more fair a competition.   
  
As the path through the forest narrowed, she had to slow her horse down to a walk. Clark quickly caught up to her.  
  
“You cheater,” he accused, laughing.   
  
She wrinkled her nose at him and laughed, her breath misting in front of her face. It wasn’t quite snowing but there was a definite feeling of it coming.   
  
“Aw, Smallville, not my fault you couldn’t keep up.”  
  
“Whatever,” he replied with a snort. He stopped his horse and looked around.   
  
“What is it?” she asked.   
  
“Come on,” he said, turning his animal in the direction of a narrow trail. He walked a short way before dismounting. Lois followed suit, wondering what he was doing.   
  
She followed him along the trail, watching for anything that might trip her up, until they came to a clearing. Clark wound his horse’s reins around an overhanging branch and indicated for her to do the same. Once she’d done so, he took her hand.  
  
“It’s just down in this gully here,” he said.  
  
“What is?” She had no idea where he was taking her and he wasn’t exactly forthcoming either.  
  
She found out after a couple of hundred yards. It was a cave. Clark took out his cellphone and used it as a flashlight, guiding them into the cave.  
  
She gasped when the dim light showed several paintings, rather like those she’d seen in books on ancient civilisations.   
  
“What is this?” she asked, awed by the sight.  
  
“This cave was once used by the Kawatche tribe,” Clark told her. “I found it my sophomore year in high school.”  
  
She listened as he explained that he’d been out dirt-biking with a friend, who wasn’t Lex, and found the cave.   
  
“These paintings tell the story of a man who came from the stars and fell in love with the mother of the Kawatche people. When he had to return home, he left them some stones which gave them the ability to turn into animals. They’re called Skinwalkers. Anyway, the legend foretold of a man who would return from the stars in a rain of fire and he would have the strength of ten men and be able to shoot fire from his eyes. He was called Naman.”  
  
The import of what he was saying dawned on her very quickly. Lois had never considered herself as smart as most people, but years of practice as an investigative journalist had her connecting the dots almost immediately.   
  
“So, you’re Naman?” she said.  
  
Clark shrugged. She got the impression he had never quite believed in the legend.   
  
“Well, that’s what Professor Willowbrook always believed.”  
  
She looked around, spotting the image of what appeared to be a two-headed monster.   
  
“What’s this?”  
  
“Naman and Sageeth,” Clark said. “They were supposedly like brothers, only to become sworn enemies.”  
  
“So a little like the Cain and Abel story then,” she said, realising that if Clark was Naman, then Lex had to be Sageeth.   
  
“I guess it would be. Yeah.”  
  
She realised it was some kind of allegory for the age-old idea of brother against brother and the wages of sin. Or in the case of Clark and Lex, she thought, the corrupting influence of power.   
  
There was another image which intrigued her. It looked like the body of a woman.   
  
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to it.  
  
“The woman Naman is destined to be with. Professor Willowbrook’s grand-daughter Kyla thought that meant her, but …”  
  
“But what?”  
  
“She died,” he said. She detected a sadness in his tone and wondered if the reason had been because he’d felt something for Kyla. Not that it really mattered, she supposed. She didn’t really need to know the details, but was sure Clark would tell her if he felt like sharing.   
  
“Oh. I’m sorry.”  
  
He shook his head. “It happened a long time ago.”  
  
She shivered as a cold wind blew through the cave.   
  
“Come on,” Clark said. “You’re cold.”  
  
They returned the horses to the farmer they’d borrowed them from and went back to the farm. Martha had left them a note saying she had gone into town and would be back before dark. Lois was beginning to like Clark’s mother, who was shrewd enough to know when they needed to spend some time alone.   
  
Clark made them hot cocoa and they sat by the fire. He had an arm around her shoulders. They sat in comfortable silence for a while. Not even talking, just being together.   
  
“How are you feeling about all this?” he asked finally.  
  
If she was honest with herself, she hadn’t really been thinking much at all about it. Being with Clark felt so natural that she didn’t even notice when he used his abilities.   
  
They’d been at the farm only a few days but in that time, Clark had shown her a lot of places in the town that she hadn’t even known about while living above the Talon. He’d even told her a few stories about some of the locals, especially when they’d become exposed to the meteor rocks. Not all of them, she learned, had fallen victim to the apparent psychosis that she had read was the reason for some of them attacking others.  
  
She thought about what she had told Chloe a few days earlier. What she had told her cousin was the truth. She couldn’t walk away, even if she wanted to. Her heart was involved. As much as she loved Clark, however, she knew they needed to take the time to really get to know each other. With no secrets between them.  
  
Walking away was not an option now anyway, she told herself.  _Chloe had called in early the second day they’d been at the farm. Bruce was with her._  
__  
“We want you to join the Justice League,” Chloe said after they’d all sat down for coffee.  
__  
She stared at her cousin, not quite sure what the other woman was getting at. Bruce smiled at her. From what she knew about the man, he was normally rather taciturn and not given to smiling easily, so it was a little unnerving.  
__  
“Lex’s arrest is just the beginning,” he said. “We need to ensure that we have a very strong case against him and to do that, we need your help.”  
__  
“In what way?” she asked.  
__  
Chloe once again spoke.  
__  
“We need everything you have dug up against Lex. All your contacts as well. We know they won’t want to talk to us, and that’s where you come in.”  
__  
“So … you’re offering me a job?” she asked. Both Bruce and her cousin nodded in confirmation. She turned to look at Clark, who nodded.  
__  
“I think you should take it,” he said.  
__  
She didn’t even need to think about it. To be able to do what she had always done as an investigative journalist, with the full backing of super-powered people like Clark, was an amazing opportunity.  
__  
She agreed, telling them she would be ready to start work the next week. Of course, she would have to leave her apartment, since it had been bought with the money she’d stolen from Lex, but she could work that out. Now that she had a regular salary, she could afford to rent a good apartment.  
__  
Clark had been totally supportive all the way, even offering the use of his own city apartment. He could easily stay at the farm and commute to the city if she was uncomfortable with the thought of them basically living together.  
  
That wasn’t the case, she thought. She was growing more and more comfortable with Clark with every passing day.   
  
“You know, I’m really okay.”  
  
He smiled. “That’s great.”  
  
She laid her head on his shoulder and sipped her cocoa, gazing into the fire. Whatever the future held for her, she had no doubt Clark would be with her every step of the way. As long as she had that, they could figure it out.  
  
“I love you,” she said quietly.  
  
“I love you too,” he replied.   
  
THE END ???  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we come to the final chapter. I know it's an odd way to leave it, but I opted for the 'non-Hollywood' ending in the book and that's what I'm going for here. Will they make it? Who knows? (They're Clois, of course they make it). Will there be a sequel? Hmm, don't know. Is another story in the pipeline? Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel.


End file.
